LIBRARY 
Connecticut  Agricultural  College 


Vol 


iXfc^^ 


Class  No.  17  D      B  1_6 

Cost 1^^ 

Date 


19dD 


-^ 


Please 

handle  this  volume 

with  care. 

The  University  of  Connecticut 
Libraries,  Storrs 


BOOK     170.078    c.  1 

DRAKE    #    PROBLEMS    OF    CONDUCT 


3  T1S3  OOOb^Sl?  0 


Z^" 


^^  out 


PROBLEMS   OF 
CONDUCT  ,^ 

AN  INTRODUCTORY  SURVEY 
OF  ETHICS 


r 


BY 

DURANT  DRAKE 

A.M.  (Harvard)    Ph.D.   (Columbia) 

Professor  of  Philosophy  at  Vassar  College 


HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

BOSTON     •      NEW  YORK     •      CHICAGO     •     DALLAS 
SAN  FRANCISCO 


^oolifi  bp  ^urant  Drake 


PROBLEMS  OF  CONDUCT. 

A  n  Introductory  Survey  of  Ethics.     {Revised 
Edition.) 

PROBLEMS  OF   RELIGION. 
A  guide  to  stable  belief  and  energetic  action  for 
all  who  are  confused  by  the  chaos  of  current 
opinions. 


HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
Boston        New  York        Chicago 


XZ  68i" 


COPYRIGHT,  1914  AND  192I,  BY  DURANT  DRAKE 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


CAMnRIDGR  •  MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED  IN  THE  U.S.A. 


TO   THE  DEAR   TWO 

WHOSE   INTEREST   IN  PROBLEMS   OF   CONDUCT 

FIRST  AWAKENED    MINE 

AND  WHOSE  EAGERNESS  TO   KNOW   AND   DO 

REMAINS   UNDIMMED    BY   THE    YEARS 

MY  FATHER  AND  MY  MOTHER 


PREFACE 

This  book  represents  in  substance  a  course  of  lectures 
and  discussions  given  first  at  the  University  of  Illinois  and 
later  at  Wesleyan  University.  It  was  written  to  meet  the 
needs  both  of  the  college  student  who  has  the  added  guid- 
dnce  of  an  instructor,  and  of  the  general  reader  who  has  no 
such  assistance.  The  attempt  has  been  made  to  keep  the 
presentation  simple  and  clear  enough  to  need  no  interpreter, 
and  by  the  list  of  readings  appended  to  each  chapter,  to 
make  a  self-directed  further  study  of  any  point  easy  and 
alluring.  These  references  are  for  the  most  part  to  books  in 
English,  easily  accessible,  and  both  intelligible  and  interest- 
ing to  the  ordinary  untrained  reader  or  undergraduate.  Some 
articles  from  the  popular  reviews  have  been  included,  which, 
if  not  always  authoritative,  are  interesting  and  suggestive. 

The  function  of  the  instructor  who  should  use  this  as  a 
textbook  would  consist,  first,  in  making  sure  that  the  text 
was  thoroughly  read  and  understood;  secondly,  in  raising 
doubts,  suggesting  opposing  views,  conducting  a  discussion 
with  the  object  of  making  the  student  think  for  himself; 
and,  thirdly,  in  adding  new  material  and  illustration  and 
directing  the  outside  readings  which  should  supplement  this 
purposely  brief  and  summary  treatment.  The  books  to 
which  reference  is  made  in  the  lists  of  readings,  and  other 
books  approved  by  the  instructor,  should  be  kept  upon 
reserved  shelves  for  the  constant  use  of  the  class  in  the 
further  study  of  questions  suggested  by  the  text  or  raised  in 
the  classroom. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  the  disputes  and  the  technical 
language  of  theorists  have  been  throughout  so  far  as  possible 
avoided.    The  discussion  of  historical  theories  and  isms  is 


vi  PREFACE 

unnecessarily  bewildering  to  the  beginner;  and  the  aim  has 
been  rather  to  keep  as  close  as  possible  to  the  actual  experi- 
ence of  the  student  and  the  language  of  everyday  life.  Far 
more  attention  is  given  than  in  most  books  on  ethics  to 
concrete  contemporary  problems.  After  all,  an  insight  into 
the  fallacies  of  the  reasoning  of  the  various  ethical  schools, 
an  ability  to  know  w^hat  they  are  talking  about  and  glibly 
refute  them,  is  of  less  importance  than  an  acquaintance 
with,  and  a  firm,  intelligent  attitude  toward,  the  vital  moral 
problems  and  movements  of  the  day.  T  have  prayed  to  be 
saved  from  academic  abstractness  and  remoteness,  and  to 
go  as  straight  as  I  could  to  the  real  perplexities  from  which 
men  suffer  in  deciding  upon  their  conduct.  The  purpose  of 
a  study  of  ethics  is,  primarily,  to  get  light  for  the  guidance 
of  life.  And  so,  while  referring  to  authors  who  differ  from 
the  views  here  expressed,  I  have  sought  to  impart  a  definite 
conception  of  relative  values,  to  offer  a  thread  for  guidance 
through  the  labyrinth  of  moral  problems,  and  to  effect  a 
heightened  realization  of  the  importance  and  the  possibili- 
ties of  right  living. 

It  is  necessary,  indeed,  in  order  to  justify  and  clarify 
our  concrete  moral  judgments,  that  we  should  reach  clear 
and  firmly  grounded  conclusions  upon  the  underlying 
abstract  questions.  And  the  habit  of  laying  aside  upon 
occasion  one's  instinctive  or  habitual  moral  preferences  and 
discussing  with  open  mind  their  justification  and  ration- 
ality is  of  great  value  to  the  individual  and  to  society. 
Hence  the  first  two  Parts  of  this  volume  take  up,  as  simply 
as  is  consonant  with  the  really  intricate  questions  involved, 
the  history  of  the  development  of  human  morality  and  the 
psychological  foundation  of  moral  obligations  and  ideals. 
The  exposition  of  the  meaning  of  right  and  wrong  there 
unfolded  serves  as  a  basis  for  the  sound  solution  of  the  con- 
fused concrete  issues,  private  and  then  public,  which  are 
discussed  in  the  remainder  of  the  volume. 


PREFACE  vii 

An  introductory  outline  of  any  subject  must  inevitably 
be  superficial.  To  explain  all  the  discriminations  that  are 
important  to  the  specialist,  to  justify  thoroughly  all  the 
positions  taken,  to  do  adequate  justice  to  opposing  views, 
would  require  ten  volumes  instead  of  one.  And  though 
there  is  a  crying  need  of  scholarly  and  elaborate  discussion 
of  the  endless  problems  of  morality,  there  is  a  prior  need  for 
the  student  of  surveying  the  field,  seeing  what  the  problems 
are,  how  they  are  related,  and  what  is  approximately  certain. 
The  impression  left  by  many  ethical  treatises,  that  every- 
thing is  matter  for  dispute  and  no  moral  judgments  are 
reliable,  seems  to  me  unfortunate;  I  have  preferred  to  incur 
the  charge  of  dogmatism  rather  than  to  fall  into  that  error 
—  to  offer  a  clear-cut  set  of  standards,  to  which  exception 
will  be  taken  by  this  critic  or  that,  rather  than  to  hold  out 
to  the  student  a  chaos  of  confused  possibilities. 

No  originality  of  viewpoint  is  claimed  for  this  book.  Its 
raison  d'etre  is  simply  to  provide  a  clearer,  more  concrete, 
and  more  concisely  comprehensive  view  of  the  nature  of 
morality  and  its  summons  to  men  than  has  seemed  to  me 
available.  I  have  drawn  freely  upon  the  thoughts  of  ethical 
teachers,  classic  and  contemporary.  These  ideas  are,  or 
ought  to  be,  common  property;  and  it  has  been  impracticable 
to  trace  them  to  their  sources  and  offer  detailed  acknowledg- 
ment. Nothing  has  been  presented  here  that  has  not  first 
passed  through  the  crucible  of  my  own  thinking  and  experi- 
ence; and  where  the  sparks  came  from  that  kindled  each 
particular  thought  I  am  sure  I  do  not  know. 

Portions  of  chapters  xxi  and  xxix  have  appeared  in  the 
Forum  and  North  American  Review  respectively;  to  the  edi- 
tors of  these  periodicals  my  thanks  are  due  for  permission 
to  reprint. 

DuHANT  Drake. 

MroDLETowN,  Conn. 
August  3,  1914. 


PREFACE  TO  EDITION  OF  1920 

The  new  aspects  given  to  many  problems  by  the  Great 
War,  the  success  of  the  Prohibition  and  Woman's  Suffrage 
movements,  and  the  perplexities  of  the  reconstruction  era 
through  which  the  peoples  of  Europe  and  America  are  rather 
blindly  groping  their  way,  have  made  it  desirable  to  revise 
many  pages  of  this  volume. 

In  adding  new  references  to  the  bibliographies  it  has  been 
difficult  to  choose  between  so  many  valuable  recent  pub- 
lications. It  has  seemed  wise,  however,  not  to  make  the 
reading-lists  too  long;  and  the  author  has  had  to  exercise  a 
somewhat  arbitrary  judgment  in  deciding  which  books  and 
magazine-articles  will  probably,  on  the  whole,  be  most  useful 
to  the  average  reader. 

This  is  not  the  first  time  that  considerable  revision  has 
been  made;  and  it  is  the  intention  of  the  author  and  pub- 
lishers to  keep  the  book  abreast  of  the  best  thought  of  the 
times.  Any  criticisms  or  suggestions  to  that  end  by  readers 
of  the  volume  will  be  gratefully  received. 

DuRANT  Drake 

Vassar  College 

September  30,  1920 


CONTENTS 

EV'TRODUCTORY 1 

"VMiat  is  the  field  of  ethics? 
"Why  should  we  study  ethics? 

PART  I.  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY  9 

CHAPTER  I.  The  Origin  of  Personal  Morality 

How  early  in  the  evolutionary  process  did  personal  morality  of 

some  sort  emerge? 
"What  were  the  main  causes  that  produced  personal  morality? 
How  far  has  the  moralizing  process  been  blind  and  how  far  con- 
scious? 

CHAPTER  n.  The  Origin  of  Soclvl  Morality    .        .    16 

How  early  was  social  morality  developed? 
By  what  means  was  social  morality  produced? 
How  has  morahty  been  fostered  by  the  tribe? 

CHAPTER  ni.  Outward  Development  —  Morals        .    25 
What  IS  the  diflFerence  between  morals  and  non-moral  customs? 
What,  in  general,  has  been  the  direction  of  moral  progress? 
WTiat  definition  of  morality  emerges  from  this? 
Is  moral  progress  certain? 

CHAPTER  rV.  Inward  Development  —  Conscience     .    38 
What  are  the  stages  in  the  history  of  moral  guidance? 
Out  of  what  has  conscience  developed? 
What  is  conscience  now? 
What  is  the  value  of  conscience? 

CHAPTER  V.  The  Individualizing  of  Conscience        .    50 
WTij'  did  not  the  individualizing  of  conscience  occur  earlier? 
What  forces  made  against  custom-morality? 
Conservatism  vs.  radicalism. 
WTiat  are  the  dangers  of  conventional  morality? 


X  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  VI.  Can  we  base  Morality  upon  Conscience?    61 

"What  is  the  meaning  of  "moral  intuitionism"? 

Do  the  deliverances  of  different  people's  consciences  agree? 

If  conscience  everywhere  agreed  in  its  dictates,  could  we  base 

morality  upon  it? 
"What  is  the  plausibility  of  moral  intuitionism? 


PART  n.  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

CHAPTER  Vn.  The  Basis  of  Right  and  Wrong  .        .    73 
What  is  the  nature  of  that  intrinsic  goodness  upon  which  ulti- 
mately all  valuations  rest? 
"WTiat  is  extrinsic  goodness? 

"What  sort  of  conduct,  then,  is  good?  And  how  shall  we  define 
virtue? 

CHAPTER  Vin.  The  Meaning  of  Duty        ...    83 

WTiy  are  there  conflicts  between  duty  and  inclination? 
Must  we  deny  that  duty  is  the  servant  of  happiness? 
Does  the  end  justify  the  means? 
What  is  the  justification  of  justice  and  chivalry? 

CHAPTER  IX.  The  Judgment  of  Character        .        .    96 
WTierein  consists  goodness  of  character? 

Can  we  say,  with  Kant,  that  the  only  good  is  the  Good  Will? 
"What  evils  may  go  with  conscientiousness? 
"What  is  the  justification  of  praise  and  blame? 
"What  is  responsibility? 

CHAPTER  X.  The  Solution  of  Personal  Problems  .  Ill 

WTiat  are  the  inadequacies  of  instinct  and  impulse  that  necessi- 
tate morality? 

WTiat  factors  are  to  be  considered  in  estimating  the  worth  of 
personal  moral  ideals? 

Epicureanism  vs.  Puritanism. 

"What  are  the  evils  in  undue  self-indulgence? 

What  are  the  evils  in  undue  self-repression? 

CHAPTER  XI.  The  Solution  of  Socl^l  Problems       .  123 

"VNhy  should  we  be  altruistic? 

WTiat  is  the  exact  meaning  of  selfishness  and  unselfishness? 

Are  altruistic  impulses  always  right? 

What  mental  and  moral  obstacles  hinder  altruistic  action? 

How  can  we  reconcile  egoism  and  altruism? 


CONTENTS  » 

CHAPTER  XII.  Objections  and  Misunderstandings    .  136 
Do  men  always  act  for  pleasure  or  to  avoid  pain? 
Are  pleasures  and  pains  incommensurable? 
Are  some  pleasures  worthier  than  others? 
Is  morality  merely  subjective  and  relative? 

CHAPTER  Xm.  Alternative  Theories         .        .        .148 
Is  morality  "categorical,"  beyond  need  of  justification? 
Should  we  live  "according  to  nature,"  and  adjust  ourselves  to  the 

evolutionary  process? 
Is  self-development,  or  self-realization,  the  ultimate  end? 
Is  the  source  of  duty  the  will  of  God? 

CHAPTER  XIV.  The  Worth  of  Morality    »        »        ,164 

Morality  as  the  organization  of  human  interests. 
Do  moral  acts  always  bring  happiness  somewhere? 
Is  there  anything  better  than  morahty? 

PART  m.  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

CHAPTER  XV.  Health  and  Efficiency         .        .'       .179 
What  is  the  moral  importance  of  health? 
Can  we  attain  to  greater  health  and  efficiency? 
Is  continued  idleness  ever  justifiable? 
Are  competitive  athletics  desirable? 
Is  it  wrong  to  smoke? 

CHAPTER  XVI.  The  Alcohol  Problem         ,        .        .194 
What  are  the  causes  of  the  use  of  alcoholic  drinks? 
What  are  the  evils  that  result  from  alcoholic  liquors? 
What  should  be  the  attitude  of  the  individual  toward  alcoholic 

liquors? 
What  should  be  our  attitude  toward  the  use  of  alcoholic  liquOTS 

by  others? 

CHAPTER  XVn.  Marrmge  and  Divorce        .        .        .210 
What  are  the  reasons  for  the  ideal  of  monogamy  ? 
What  safeguards  for  this  ideal  are  necessary.? 
What  are  the  factors  in  an  ideal  marriage? 
Is  divorce  morally  justifiable? 

CHAPTER  XVni.  Fellowship,  Loyalty,  and  Luxury.  229 

What  social  relationships  impose  claims  upon  us? 
What  general  duties  do  we  owe  our  fellows? 
Are  the  rich  justified  in  living  in  luxury? 
Is  it  wrong  to  gamble,  bet,  or  speculate? 


xii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XIX.  Truthfulness  and  its  Problems        .  1^14 
What  are  the  reasons  for  the  obligation  of  truthfulness? 
What  exceptions  are  allowable  to  the  duty  of  truthfulness? 
In  what  directions  are  our  standards  of  truthfulness  low? 
The  ethics  of  journalism. 

CHAPTER  XX.  Culture  and  Art 259 

What  is  the  value  of  culture  and  art? 
What  is  most  important  in  cultural  education? 
What  dangers  are  there  in  culture  and  art  for  life? 
Should  art  be  censored  in  the  interests  of  morality? 

CHAPTER  XXI.  The  Mechanism  op  Self-Control      .  276 

What  are  our  potentialities  of  greater  self-control? 
A  practicable  mechanism  of  self-control. 
Various  accessories  and  safeguards. 

CHAPTER  XXII.  The  Attainability  of  Happiness      .  288 
The  threefold  key  to  happiness: 
I.  Hearty  allegiance  to  duty. 
II.  Hearty  acquiescence  in  our  lot. 

III.  Hearty  appreciation  of  the  wonder  and  beauty  in  life. 
Can  we  maintain  a  steady  underglow  of  happiness? 

PART  IV.  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

CHAPTER  XXm.  Patriotism  and  World-Peace  .        .  305 

What  is  the  meaning  and  value  of  patriotism? 

How  should  patriotism  be  directed  and  qualified? 

What  have  been  the  benefits  of  war? 

What  are  the  evils  of  war? 

What  can  we  do  to  hasten  world-peace? 

CHAPTER  XXIV.  Political  Purity  and  Efficiency    .  323 
WTiat  are  the  forces  making  for  corruption  in  politics? 
What  are  the  evil  results  of  political  corruption? 
What  is  the  political  duty  of  the  citizen? 
WTiat  legislative  checks  to  corruption  are  possible? 

CHAPTER  XXV.  Soclvl  Allevmtion     ,        .        ,        .343 
What  is  the  duty  of  the  State  in  regard  to: 
I.  Sickness  and  preventable  death? 
II.  Poverty  and  inadequate  living  conditions? 
III.  Commercialized  vice? 
IVo  Crime? 


CONTENTS  xiii 

CHAPTER  XXVI.  Industrial  Wrongs   .        .        .        .863 

In  our  present  organization  of  industry,  what  are  the  duties  of 
business  men: 
I.  To  the  public? 

II.  To  investors? 
m.  To  competitors? 

IV.  To  employees? 
What  general  remedies  for  industrial  wrongs  are  feasible? 

CHAPTER  XXVII.   Industrial  Reconstruction    .        .  379 
Ought  the  trusts  to  be  brdien  up,  or  regulated? 
What  are  the  ethics  of  the  following  schemes: 

I.  Trade-unions  and  strikes? 

II.  Profit-sharing,  cooperation,  consumers'  leagues? 

III.  Government  regulation  of  prices,  profits,  and  wages? 

IV.  Socialism? 

CHAPTER  XXVIII.  Liberty  and  Law   .        .        .        o  399 

What  are  the  essential  aspects  of  the  ideal  of  liberty? 

The  ideal  of  individualism. 

The  ideal  of  legal  control. 

Should  existing  laws  always  be  obeyed? 

CHAPTER  XXIX.  Equality  and  Privilege  .        .  414 

What  flagrant  forms  of  inequality  exist  in  our  society? 
What  methods  of  equalizing  opportunity  are  possible? 
What  are  the  ethics  of: 
I.  The  single  tax? 

II.  Free  trade  and  protection? 

III.  The  control  of  inunigration? 

IV.  The  woman-movement? 

CHAPTER  XXX.  The  Future  of  the  Race         .  434 

In  what  ways  should  the  State  seek  to  better  human  environment? 
WTiat  should  be  done  in  the  way  of  public  education? 
What  can  be  done  by  eugenics? 

What  are  the  gravest  moral  dangers  of  our  times? 
INDEX ....  451 


PROBLEMS  OF  CONDUCT 

INTRODUCTORY 

What  is  the  field  of  ethics? 

To  know  what  exists,  in  its  stark  reality,  is  the  concern  of 
natural  science  and  natural  philosophy;  to  know  what  mat- 
ters, is  the  field  of  moral  philosophy,  or  ethics.  The  one 
group  of  studies  deals  with  facts  simply  as  facts,  the  other 
with  their  values.  Human  life  is  checkered  with  the  sim- 
shine  and  shadow  of  good  and  evil,  joy  and  pain;  it  is  these 
quaHtative  differences  that  make  it  something  more  than  a 
meaningless  eddy  in  the  cosmic  whirl.  Natural  philosophy 
(including  the  physical  and  psychological  sciences),  drawing 
its  impartial  map  of  existence,  is  interesting  and  important; 
it  informs  us  about  our  environment  and  ourselves,  shows 
us  our  resources  and  our  powers,  what  we  can  do  and  how 
to  do  it.  Moral  philosophy  asks  the  deeper  and  more  signifi- 
cant question.  What  shall  we  do.^  For  the  momentous  fact 
about  life  is  that  it  has  differences  in  value,  and,  more  than 
that,  that  we  can  make  differences  in  value.  Caught  as  we 
are  by  the  irresistible  flux  of  existence,  we  find  ourselves 
able  so  to  steer  our  lives  as  to  change  the  proportion  of  light 
and  shade,  to  give  greater  value  to  a  life  that  might  have  had 
less.  This  possibility  makes  our  moral  problem.  What  shall 
we  choose  and  from  what  refrain?  To  what  aims  shall  we 
give  our  allegiance?  What  shall  we  fight  for  and  what 
against? 

For  the  savage  practically  all  of  his  activity  is  determined 
by  his  imperative  needs,  so  that  there  is  little  opportunity 


2  INTRODUCTORY 

for  choice  or  reflection  upon  the  aims  of  his  life.  He  must 
find  food,  and  shelter,  and  clothing  to  keep  himself  warm 
and  dry;  he  must  protect  himself  from  the  enemies  that 
menace  him,  and  rest  when  he  is  tired.  Nor  are  most  of  us 
to-day  far  removed  from  that  primitive  condition;  the 
moments  when  we  consciously  choose  and  steer  our  course 
are  few  and  fleeting.  Yet  with  the  development  of  civiliza- 
tion the  elemental  burdens  are  to  some  extent  lifted;  men 
come  to  have  superfluous  strength,  leisure  hours,  freedom 
to  do  something  more  than  merely  earn  their  living.  And 
further,  with  the  development  of  intelligence,  new  ways  of 
fulfilling  the  necessary  tasks  suggest  themselves,  moral 
problems  arise  where  none  were  felt  before.  Men  learn  that 
they  have  not  made  the  most  of  their  opportunities  or  lived 
the  best  possible  lives;  they  have  veered  this  way  and  that 
according  to  the  moment's  impulse,  they  have  been  misled 
by  ingrained  habits  and  paralyzed  by  inertia,  they  have 
wandered  at  random  for  lack  of  a  clear  vision  of  their  goal. 
The  task  of  the  moralist  is  to  attain  such  a  clear  vision; 
to  understand,  first,  the  basis  of  all  preference,  and  then,  in 
detail,  the  reasons  for  preferring  this  concrete  act  to  that. 
Here  are  a  thousand  impulses  and  instincts  drawing  us,  with 
infinite  further  possibilities  suggesting  themselves  to  reflec- 
tion; the  more  developed  our  natures  the  more  frequently 
do  our  desires  conflict.  Why  is  any  one  better  than  another? 
How  can  we  decide  between  them?  Or  shall  we  perhaps  dis- 
own them  all  for  some  other  and  better  way. 

Man's  effort  to  solve  these  problems  is  revealed  outwardly 
in  a  multitude  of  precepts  and  laws,  in  customs  and  conven- 
tions; and  inwardly  in  the  sense  of  duty  and  shame,  in 
aspiration,  in  the  instinctive  reactions  of  praise,  blame,  con- 
tentment, and  remorse.  The  leadings  of  these  forces  are, 
however,  often  divergent,  sometimes  radically  so.  We  must 
seek  a  completer  insight.  There  must  be  some  best  way  of 


INTRODUCTORY  3 

solving  the  problem  of  life,  some  happiest,  most  useful  way 
of  living;  its  pursuit  constitutes  the  field  of  ethics.  Nothing 
could  be  more  practical,  more  vital,  more  imiversally 
human. 

Why  should  we  study  ethics? 

(1)  The  most  obvious  reason  for  the  study  of  ethics  is 
that  we  may  get  more  light  for  our  daily  problems.  We  are 
constantly  having  to  choose  how  we  shall  act  and  being 
perplexed  by  opposing  advantages.  Decide  one  way  or  the 
other  we  must.  On  what  groimds  shall  we  decide.^  How  shall 
we  feel  assured  that  we  are  following  a  real  duty,  pursuing 
an  actual  good,  and  not  being  led  astray  by  a  mere  prejudice 
or  convention?  The  alternative  is,  to  decide  on  impulse,  at 
haphazard,  after  some  superficial  and  one-sided  reflection; 
or  to  think  the  matter  through,  to  get  some  definite  criteria 
for  judgments,  and  to  face  the  recurrent  question,  What 
shall  we  do-^  in  the  steady  light  of  those  principles.^ 

(2)  In  addition  to  the  fact  that  we  all  have  unavoidable 
problems  which  we  must  solve  one  way  or  another,  a  little 
familiarity  with  life,  an  acquaintance  with  the  biographies  of 
great  and  good  men,  should  lead  us  to  suspect  that  beyond 
the  horizon  of  these  immediate  needs  lie  whole  ranges  of 
beautiful  and  happy  living  to  which  comparatively  few  ever 
attain.  There  are  better  ways  of  doing  things  than  most  of 
us  have  dreamed.  The  study  of  ethics  should  reveal  these 
vistas  and  stimulate  us  to  a  noble  discontent  with  om*  inferior 

^  Cf.  Matthew  Arnold,  Essays  in  Criticism,  vol.  i:  "Marcus  Aiirelius," 
opening  paragraph:  "The  object  of  systems  of  morality  is  to  take  possession 
of  human  life,  to  save  it  from  being  abandoned  to  passion  or  allowed  to  drift 
at  hazard,  to  give  it  happiness  by  establishing  it  in  the  practice  of  \'irtue; 
and  this  object  they  seek  to  attain  by  presenting  to  human  life  fixed  princi- 
ples of  action,  fixed  rules  of  conduct.  In  its  uninspired  as  well  as  in  its 
inspired  moments,  in  its  days  of  languor  or  gloom  as  well  as  in  its  days  of 
sunshine  and  energy,  human  life  has  thus  always  a  clue  to  follow,  and  may 
always  be  making  way  towards  its  goal." 


4  INTRODUCTORY 

morals.^  Such  a  forward  look  and  development  of  ideals 
not  only  adds  greatly  to  the  worth  of  life  but  prepares  a  man 
to  meet  perplexities  and  temptations  which  may  some  day 
arise.  It  pays  to  educate  one's  self  for  future  emergencies  by 
meditating  not  only  upon  present  problems  but  upon  the 
further  potentialities  of  conduct,  right  and  wrong,  that  may 
lie  ahead,  and  building  up  a  code  for  one's  self  that  will 
make  life  not  only  richer  but  steadier  and  more  secure. 

(3)  Another  advantage  of  a  systematic  study  of  ethics  is 
that  it  can  make  clearer  to  us  why  one  act  is  better  than 
another;  why  duty  is  justified  in  thwarting  our  inclinations 
and  conscience  is  to  be  obeyed.  Not  only  is  this  an  intel- 
lectual gain,  but  it  is  an  immense  fortification  to  the  will. 
There  comes  a  time  in  the  experience  of  every  thinking  man 
when  a  command  not  reinforced  by  a  reason  breeds  distrust, 
and  when  until  he  can  intelligently  defend  an  ideal  he  will 
hesitate  to  give  it  his  allegiance.  Morahty,  to  be  depended 
upon,  must  be  not  a  mere  matter  of  breeding  and  conven- 
tion, or  of  impulse  and  emotion,  but  the  result  of  rational 
insight  and  conscious  resolve.  To  many  people  morality 
seems  nothing  but  convention,  or  an  arbitrary  tyranny,  or 
a  mysterious  and  awful  necessity,  something  extraneous 
to  their  own  desires,  from  which  they  would  like  to  escape. 
To  be  able  to  refute  these  skeptics,  expose  the  sophisms  and 
specious  arguments  by  which  they  support  their  wrongdoing, 
and  show  that  they  have  chosen  the  lesser  good,  is  a  valuable 
help  to  the  community  and  to  one's  own  integrity  of  conduct. 
Too  often  the  people  perish  for  lack  of  vision;  an  understand- 
ing of  the  naturalness  and  enormous  desirability  of  morality, 
together  with  an  appreciation  of  its  main  injunctions,  would 

^  Cf.  Emerson,  in  a  letter  to  FrSulein  Gisela  von  Arnim:  "In  reading 
your  letter,  I  felt,  as  when  I  read  rarely  a  good  novel,  rebuked  that  I  do 
not  use  in  ray  life  these  delicious  relations;  or  that  I  accept  anything  inferior 
or  ugly." 


INTRODUCTORY  5 

enlist  upon  its  side  many  restless  spirits  who  now  chafe 
under  a  sense  of  needless  restraint  and  seek  some  delusory 
freedom  which  leads  to  pain  and  death.  Morality  is  simply 
the  best  way  of  living;  and  the  more  fully  men  realize  that, 
the  more  readily  will  they  submit  themselves  to  the  sacri- 
fices it  requires. 

(4)  Finally,  a  study  of  ethics  should  help  us  to  see  what 
are  the  prevalent  sins  and  moral  dangers  of  our  day,  and 
thus  arouse  us  to  put  the  weight  of  our  blame  and  praise 
where  they  are  needed.  Widespread  public  opinion  is  a 
force  of  incalculable  power,  which  is  largely  unused.  Politics 
and  business,  and  to  a  far  greater  extent  than  now  private 
life,  will  become  clean  and  honest  and  kind  just  so  soon  as  a 
sufficient  number  of  people  wake  up  and  demand  it.  We 
have  the  power  to  make  sins  which  are  now  generally  toler- 
ated and  respectable,  so  odious,  so  infamous,  that  they  will 
practically  disappear.  There  are  certain  of  the  older  forms 
of  sin  which  the  race  in  its  long  struggle  upward  has  so 
effectually  blacklisted  that  only  a  few  perverts  now  lapse 
into  them;  we  have  execrated  out  of  existence  whole  classes 
of  cruelty  and  vice.  But  with  the  changing  and  ever  more 
complex  relations  of  society  new  forms  of  sin  continually 
creep  in;  these  we  have  not  yet  come  to  brand  with  the 
odium  they  deserve.  Leaders  of  society  and  pillars  of  the 
church  are  often,  and  usually  without  disturbance  of  con- 
science, guilty  of  wrongdoing  as  grave  in  its  effects,  or  graver, 
than  many  of  the  faults  we  relentlessly  chastise.  On  the 
other  hand,  many  really  useful  reforms  are  blocked  because 
they  awaken  old  prejudices  or  cross  silly  and  meaningless 
conventions.  The  air  is  full  of  proposals,  invectives,  causes, 
movements;  how  shall  we  know  which  to  espouse  and  which 
to  reject,  or  where  best  to  lend  a  hand?  We  need  a  consistent 
and  well-founded  point  of  view  from  which  to  judge.  To 
get  such  a  sane  and  far-sighted  moral  perspective;  to  see  the 


e  INTRODUCTORY 

acts  of  our  fellow  men  with  a  proper  valuation;  to  be  able 
to  point  out  the  insidious  dangers  of  conduct  which  is  not 
yet  as  generally  rebuked  as  it  ought  to  be;  and  at  the  same 
time  to  emancipate  ourselves  and  others  from  the  mistaken 
and  merely  arbitrary  precepts  that  are  intermingled  with 
oiu*  genuine  morality,  and  so  attain  the  largest  possible 
freedom  of  action,  —  such  should  be  the  outcome  of  a  thor- 
ough study  of  ethical  principles  and  ideals. 


PART  I 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

In  almost  any  field  it  is  wise  to  precede  definition  by  an 
impartial  survey  of  the  subject-matter.  So  if  we  are  to 
form  an  unbiased  conception  of  what  morality  is,  it  will  be 
safest  to  consider  first  what  the  morals  of  men  actually  have 
been,  how  they  came  into  being,  and  what  function  they 
have  served  in  human  life.  Thus  we  shall  be  sure  that  our 
theory  is  in  touch  with  reality,  and  be  saved  from  mere 
closet-philosophies  and  irrelevant  speculations.  Our  task 
in  this  First  Part  will  be  not  to  criticize  by  reference  to  any 
ethical  standards,  but  to  observe  and  describe,  as  a  mere 
bit  of  preliminary  sociology,  what  it  is  in  their  lives  to  which 
men  have  given  the  name  "morahty,"  of  what  use  it  has 
been,  and  through  the  action  of  what  forces  it  has  tended 
to  develop.  With  these  data  in  mind,  we  shall  be  the  better 
able,  in  the  Second  Part,  to  formulate  our  criteria  for  judg- 
ing the  different  codes  of  morality;  we  shall  find  that  we  are 
but  making  explicit  and  conscious  the  considerations  that, 
unexpressed  and  unrealized,  have  been  the  persistent  and 
underlying  factors  in  their  development. 

How  early  in  the  evolutionary  process  did  personal  moral- 
ity of  some  sort  emerge? 

Of  course  the  words  (in  any  language)  and  the  explicit 
conceptions  "morality,"  "duty,"  "right,"  "wrong,"  etc., 
are  very  late  in  appearance,  presupposing  as  they  do  a 
power  of  reflection  and  abstraction  which  develops  only  in 
man  and  with  a  considerable  civilization.    Even  in  the 


^12  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

environment.  Hunger  and  thirst  imperiously  check  the 
tendency  to  laziness,  or  heedlessness,  and  stimulate  to 
industriousness  and  prudence.  To  this  day  the  mere  need  of 
food  and  clothing  and  shelter  is  the  main  bulwark  of  these 
virtues.  The  acquisitive  impulse,  which  is  also  rather  early 
m  appearance,  has  an  increasing  share  in  this  sort  of  morali- 
zation.  The  craving  for  action,  which  is  the  natural  result 
of  abundant  nervous  and  muscular  energy,  the  combative 
instinct,  the  joy  of  conquest  and  achievement,  and  the 
sexual  impulse,  go  far  in  counteracting  cowardice  and 
inertia.  The  artistic  impulse,  when  it  emerges  in  man,  long 
before  the  dawn  of  history,  makes  against  caprice  for  orderli- 
ness, self-control,  and  patience.  Ambition  is  a  potent  force 
in  human  affairs.  The  desire  for  the  approval  of  others, 
which  is  pre-human,  makes  for  all  the  virtues. 

(2)  But  in  addition  to  these  inward  springs  of  morality 
there  is  the  constant  pressure  of  a  hostile  environment. 
Cold,  storms,  rivers  that  block  journeys,  forests  that  must 
be  felled,  treacherous  seas  that  lure  with  promise  and  exact 
toll  for  carelessness,  arouse  men  out  of  their  torpor  and  aid 
the  development  of  the  virtues  we  have  been  considering. 
The  necessity  of  rearing  some  sort  of  shelter  makes  against 
laziness  for  industry  and  perseverance.  The  dangers  of  wind 
or  flood  check  heedlessness  in  the  choice  of  location  for  the 
home  and  foster  prudence  and  foresight.  In  the  harsher 
climates  man  is  more  goaded  by  nature;  hence  more  moral 
progress  has,  probably,  been  effected  in  the  temperate  than 
in  the  tropical  zones. 

(3)  A  third  and  very  important  source  lies  in  the  mutual 
hostility  of  the  animal  species  and  of  men.  Slothfulness  and 
recklessness  mean  for  the  great  majority  of  animals  the  im- 
minent risk  of  becoming  the  prey  of  some  stronger  animal. 
Among  tribes  of  men  the  ceaseless  struggles  for  supremacy 
have  pricked  cowardice  into  courage,  demanded  self-control 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  PERSONAL  MORALITY  13 

Instead  of  temper,  supplanted  gluttony  and  drunkenness  by 
temperance.  Cruel  as  has  been  the  suffering  caused  by  war, 
end  deplorable  as  most  of  its  effects,  it  did  a  great  deal  in 
the  early  stages  of  man's  history  to  promote  the  personal 
virtues,  alertness,  moderation,  caution,  courage,  and  efB- 
<;iency. 

In  the  latest  stages  of  man's  development,  conscious 
regard  for  law  and  custom,  the  fear  of  gods,  the  explicit 
recognition  of  duty  and  conscience,  and  the  direct  pursuit 
of  ideals  —  all  the  reflective  considerations  that  we  may 
lump  together  under  the  word  "conscientiousness"  —  play 
their  ever  increasing  part  and  complicate  the  psychological 
situation.  But  even  in  modem  civilized  man  the  underlying 
animal  forces  count  for  far  more.  And  without  them  the 
later  self-conscious  forces  would  not  have  come  into  play 
at  all.  There  is  a  small  class  of  people  who  are  dominated 
throughout  their  activities  by  consciously  present  ideals  or 
obedience  to  religious  injunctions.  But  the  average  man 
still  acts  mainly  under  the  pressure  of  the  more  primitive 
forces  which  we  have  enumerated. 

How  far  has  the  moralizing  process  been  blind  and  how  far 
conscious? 

(1)  To  a  very  large  extent  the  moralizing  process  has 
been  a  merely  mechanical  one.  Through  slight  differences 
in  nerve-structm'e  individuals  have  varied  a  little  in  their 
response  to  the  pressure  of  inward  cravings  and  outward 
perils.  The  braver,  the  more  prudent,  the  more  industrious 
have  had  a  better  chance  of  survival.  So  by  the  process 
which  we  have  come  to  call  natural  selection  there  has  been 
a  continual  weeding-out  of  the  relatively  lazy,  cowardly, 
reckless,  and  imprudent.  Much  of  our  morality  is  the  result 
of  tendencies  thus  long  cultivated  by  the  ruthless  methods  of 


14  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

nature;  we  inherit  a  complex  nervous  organization,  the  out- 
come of  ages  of  moulding  and  selection,  which  now  instinc- 
tively and  easily  responds  to  stimuli  with  a  certain  degree 
of  inbred  moraUty.  This  is  the  case  much  more  than  is 
apparent  upon  the  surface.  The  child  seems  very  unmoral, 
the  mere  prey  of  passing  impulses;  but  latent  in  his  brain 
are  many  aptitudes  and  tendencies  which  will  at  the  proper 
time  ripen  and  manifest  themselves.  The  period  of  adoles- 
cence is  that  during  which  the  changes  in  mental  structure 
which  were  effected  during  the  later  stages  of  evolution  are 
being  made  in  the  mind  of  this  new  individual;  he  reenacts, 
as  it  were,  in  a  few  years,  the  history  of  the  race,  and  emerges 
without  any  conscious  effort,  the  possessor  of  the  fruits  of 
that  long  struggle  of  which  he  was  always  the  heir. 

(2)  In  all  the  later  stages  of  animal  evolution,  however, 
moral  development  is  largely  conscious,  or  semi-conscious. 
Besides  our  inner  inheritance  of  altered  brain-paths  there  is 
a  social  inheritance  of  habits  which  each  generation  adopts 
by  imitation  of  its  predecessors.  Without  any  deliberate 
intention,  the  young  of  every  species  imitate  their  parents, 
and  then  the  older  members  of  the  flock  or  herd.  "Sugges- 
tion" is  said  by  some  to  be  the  chief  means  of  moralization; 
we  are  brave  or  industrious  because  we  see  others  practising 
these  virtues  and  naturally  do  as  they  do.  At  any  rate, 
whichever  are  more  important,  the  inherited  tendencies  or 
those  acquired  by  contagion,  both  of  these  factors  play  a 
large  part  in  the  development  of  the  individual's  morals. 

(3)  The  third  method  of  moral  development  is  that  which 
we  call  "learning  by  experience."  The  pain  or  dissatisfac^ 
tion  which  a  wrong  impulse  brings  in  its  train,  the  satisfac. 
tion  which  follows  a  moral  act,  are  remembered,  and  recia^ 
with  the  recurrence  of  a  similar  situation,  becoming  perhaps 
the  decisive  factors  in  steering  the  animal  or  man  toward 
his  true  welfare.    Many  animals  quite  low  in  the  organic 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  PERSONAL  MORALITY  15 

scale  learn  by  experience;  and  though  of  course  the  degree 
of  consciousness  that  accompanies  these  readjustments 
varies  enormously,  this  method  of  morahzation  may  be  said 
to  be  always,  like  the  preceding,  a  more  or  less  conscious 
process.  Learning  by  experience  is  subject,  of  course,  to 
many  mistaken  judgments;  the  fallacy  of  post  hoc  propter 
hoc  leads  many  learners  to  avoid  perfectly  innocent  acts  as 
supposedly  involving  some  evil  result  with  which  they  were 
once  by  chance  connected;  and  the  true  causes  of  the  evils 
are  often  overlooked.  Even  when  dimly  conscious  readjust- 
ments become  highly  conscious  deliberation,  the  results  of 
that  deliberation  may  be  less  forwarding  morally  than  the 
unconscious  and  merciless  grinding  of  natural  selection. 

More  and  more,  of  course,  as  men  grew  in  power  of  reflec- 
tion, did  they  consciously  shape  their  morals;  and  this 
intelligent  selection,  which  has  as  yet  played  a  compara- 
tively small  role,  is  bound,  as  men  become  more  and  more 
rational,  to  supersede  in  importance  the  other  factors  in 
moral  evolution.  But  in  the  later  phases  of  evolution  all 
three  of  these  processes  blend  together;  and  it  would  be 
impossible  for  the  keenest  analyst  to  tell  how  much  of  his 
conduct  was  determined  in  each  of  these  ways. 

H.  Spencer,  Data  of  Ethics  (also  published  as  the  first  part  of  his 
Principles  of  Ethics),  chap,  i  and  chap,  n,  through  sec.  4;  or  J. 
Fiske,  Cosmic  Philosophy,  pt.  n,  chap,  xxn,  first  half,  to  "We  are 
now  prepared  to  deal  — ."  L.  T.  Hobhouse,  Morals  in  Evolution, 
pt.  I,  chap.  I,  sees.  1-4.  I.  King,  Development  of  Religion,  pp.  48-59. 
A  great  mass  of  concrete  material  will  be  found  in  E.  Wester- 
marck's  Origin  and  Development  of  Moral  Ideas,  H.  O.  Taylor's 
Ancient  Ideals,  W.  E.  H.  Lecky's  History  of  European  Morals, 
H.  Rashdall,  Is  Conscience  an  Emotion  ?  chap.  n. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  SOCIAL  MORALITY 

How  early  was  social  morality  developed? 

By  social  morality  we  mean,  concretely,  such  virtues  qs 
tender  and  fostering  love,  sympathy,  obedience,  subordina- 
tion of  selfish  instincts  to  group-demands,  the  service  of 
other  individuals  or  of  the  group.  These  habits  are  later  in 
development  than  some  of  the  personal  virtues,  but  long 
antedate  the  differentiation  of  man  from  the  other  animals. 
Instances  of  self-sacrificing  devotion  of  parent  to  offspring 
among  birds  and  beasts  are  too  common  to  need  mention. 
Devotion  to  the  mate,  though  less  developed,  is  early  present 
in  many  species.  The  strict  subordination  of  ants  and  bees 
to  the  common  welfare  is  a  well-known  marvel,  the  latter 
enthusiastically  and  poetically  described  by  Maeterlinck  in 
his  delightful  Life  of  the  Bees.  The  stern  requirements  of 
obedience  to  the  unwritten  laws  of  the  herd,  which  make 
powerful  so  many  species  of  animals  individually  weak,  are 
graphically,  though  of  course  with  exaggeration,  set  forth 
by  Kipling  in  his  Jungle  Book.  Many  sorts  of  animals,  such 
as  deer  and  antelopes,  might  long  ago  have  been  extermi- 
nated but  for  their  mutual  cooperation  and  service.  Affection 
and  sympathy  in  high  degree  are  evident  in  some  sub-human 
species. 

When  we  come  to  man,  we  find  his  earliest  recorded  life 
based  upon  a  social  morality  which,  if  crude,  was  in  some 
respects  stricter  than  that  of  to-day.  It  is  a  mistake  to  thint 
of  the  savage  as  Rousseau  imagined  him,  a  free-hearted, 
happy-go-lucky  individualist,  only  by  a  cramping  civiliza- 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  SOCIAL  MORALITY  17 

tion  bowed  under  the  yoke  of  laws  and  conventions.  Savage 
life  is  essentially  group-life;  the  individual  is  nothing,  the 
tribe  everything.  The  gods  are  tribal  gods,  warfare  is  tribal 
warfare,  hunting,  sowing,  harvesting,  are  carried  on  by  the 
community  as  a  whole.  There  are  few  personal  possessions, 
there  is  little  personal  will;  obedience  to  the  tribal  customs, 
and  mutual  cooperation,  are  universal.* 

An  elaborate  and  stern  social  morality,  then,  long  pre- 
ceded verbally  formulated  laws;  it  was  a  matter  of  instinct 
and  emotion  long  before  it  was  a  matter  of  calculation  or 
conscience.  The  most  primitive  men  acknowledge  a  duty 
to  their  neighbors;  and  the  subsequent  advance  of  social 
morality  has  consisted  simply  in  more  and  more  comprehen- 
sive answers  to  the  questions.  What  is  my  duty.''  and  Who  is 
my  neighbor .''  At  first,  the  neighbor  was  the  fellow  tribes- 
man only,  all  outsiders  being  deemed  fair  prey.  Every 
member  of  the  clan  instinctively  arose  to  avenge  an  injury 
to  any  other  member,  and  rejoiced  in  triumphs  over  their 
common  foes.  We  still  have  survivals  of  this  primitive  code 
in  the  Corsican  vendettas  and  Kentucky  feuds.  With  the 
growth  of  nations,  the  cooperative  spirit  came  to  embrace 
wider  and  wider  circles;  but  even  as  yet  there  is  little  of  it  in 
international  relations.  The  old  double  standard  of  morality 

^  As  an  example  of  the  solidarity  of  barbarous  tribes,  note  how  Abime- 
lech,  seeking  election  as  king,  says  to  "all  the  men  of  Shechem":  "Remem- 
ber that  I  am  your  bone  and  your  flesh."  (Judges  ix,  2.)  Later,  "all  the 
tribes  of  Israel"  say  to  David,  "Behold,  we  are  thy  bone  and  thy  flesh." 
(2  Sam.  V,  1.) 

Of  savage  life  as  observed  in  modem  times  we  have  many  reports  like 
this:  "Many  strange  customs  and  laws  obtain  in  Zululand,  but  there  is  no 
moral  code  in  all  the  world  more  rigidly  observed  than  that  of  the  Zulus." 
{R.  H.  Millward,  quoted  by  Myersy  History  as  Past  Ethics, -jp.  11.)  Compare 
this:  "A  Kafir  feels  that  the  'frame  that  binds  him  in'  extends  to  the  clan. 
The  sense  of  solidarity  of  the  family  in  Europe  is  thin  and  feeble  compared 
to  the  full-blooded  sense  of  corporate  union  of  the  Kafir'clan.  The  claims 
of  the  clan  entirely  swamp  the  rights  of  the  individual."  (Kidd,  Savage 
Childhood,  p.  74.) 


18  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

persists  in  spite  of  the  command  to  which  we  give  theoretic 
allegiance  —  "Ye  have  heard  that  it  hath  been  said,  Thou 
shalt  love  thy  neighbour,  and  hate  thine  enemy.  But  I  say 
unto  you,  Love  your  enemies ! "  From  the  same  lips  came  the 
final  answer  to  the  question,  "Who  is  my  neighbour?"  It 
can  be  found  in  the  tenth  chapter  of  the  Gospel  according 
to  Luke. 

By  what  means  was  social  morality  produced? 

(1)  The  earliest  source  of  social  morality  lies  in  the  mater- 
nal instinct;  the  first  animal  that  took  care  of  its  young  stood 
at  the  beginning  of  this  wonderful  advance.  The  originating 
causes  of  the  first  slight  care  of  eggs  or  offspring  lay,  no 
doubt,  in  some  obscure  physiological  readjustments,  due  to 
forces  irrelevant  to  morahty.  But  the  young  that  had  even 
such  slight  care  had  a  survival  advantage  over  their  rivals, 
and  would  transmit  the  rudimentary  instinct  to  their 
offspring.  Thus,  given  a  start  in  that  direction,  natural 
selection,  steadily  favoring  the  more  maternally  disposed, 
produced  species  with  a  highly  developed  and  long-continu- 
ing maternal  love.  In  similar  manner  but  in  lesser  degree  a 
paternal  instinct  was  developed.  The  existence  of  these 
instincts  implied  the  power  of  sympathy  and  altruistic 
action  —  that  is,  action  by  one  individual  for  another's 
welfare.  From  sympathy  for  offspring  to  sympathy  for 
mate  and  other  members  of  the  group  was  but  a  step;  and 
all  sympathetic  action  may  have  its  ultimate  source  in 
mother-love. 

(2)  Not  only  was  natural  selection  early  at  work  in  the 
rivalry  for  existence  between  individuals,  protecting  those 
stocks  that  had  the  stronger  maternal  and  paternal  instincts, 
but  it  played  an  important  part  in  the  struggle  between 
groups.  Those  species  that  developed  the  ability  to  keep 
Vogether  for  mutual  protection  or  for  success  in  hunting  had 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  SOCIAL  MORALITY  19 

a  marked  advantage.  And  \\athin  a  speries  those  particular 
herds  or  flocks  or  tribes  that  cooperated  best  outlived  the 
others.  With  the  strongest  animals,  such  as  lions  and  tigers, 
and  with  the  weakest,  such  as  rabbits  and  mice,  the  instinct 
to  stand  by  one  another  is  of  no  value  and  so  vras  never 
fostered  by  natural  selection.  But  in  many  species  of 
animals  of  intermediate  strength,  that  by  cooperation  might 
be  able  to  resist  attack  or  overcome  enemies  that  they 
would  singly  be  impotent  against,  the  cooperative  instinct 
became  strongly  developed.  Notably  in  such  case  was  man; 
and  we  find  group-consciousness,  tribal  loyalty,  continually 
enhanced  by  the  killing-ofi  of  the  tribes  in  wliich  it  was 
feeblei.  The  dominant  races  in  man's  internecine  struggles 
have  been  those  of  passionate  patriotism  and  capacity  for 
working  together.  Nature  has  socialized  man  by  a  repeated 
apphcation  of  the  method  hinted  at  in  the  adage  '*  United 
W'e  stand,  divided  we  fall."  Successful  war  demands  loyalty 
and  obedience,  self-forgetfulness  and  mutual  service.  It 
demands  also  the  cessation  of  internal  squabbling,  the 
restraint  of  individual  greed,  lust,  and  caprice.  At  first 
instinctive,  these  virtues  came  with  clearing  consciousness 
to  be  dehberately  cultivated  by  the  tribe,  in  ways  which  we 
shall  in  a  moment  indicate. 

(3)  As  in  the  development  of  personal  morality,  the  hos- 
tility of  inanimate  nature,  coupled  with  the  urgency  of 
inner  needs,  has  also  played  its  part  in  the  socialization  of 
man.  The  satisfying  of  hunger,  protection  against  storm, 
flood,  and  other  physical  calamities,  is  greatly  forwarded 
by  cooperation.  The  rearing  of  a  shelter,  for  example,  that 
shall  be  at  all  comfortable  and  secure,  demands  the  labor  of 
several.  With  the  development  of  civilization,  mutual  assist- 
ance and  the  division  of  labor  become  more  and  more  imper- 
ative. As  man  developed  more  and  more  into  a  reflective 
animal,  the  comprehension  of  these  advantages  became 


20  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

clearer  and  clearer  to  him.  Resentment  against  mere  in- 
dividualism grew  keener;  and  any  member  whose  laziness 
or  passions  led  him  to  pull  apart  from  the  common  good  had 
to  incur  the  anger  of  his  fellows. 

Under  these  three  heads  —  the  selection  of  the  maternal 
instinct,  with  its  potentiahties  of  universal  sympathy, 
through  the  struggle  between  individuals;  the  selection  of 
the  various  powers  of  loyalty  and  cooperation  through  the 
struggle  between  groups;  and  the  production  of  cooperative 
habits  through  the  struggle  with  inanimate  nature  —  we 
may  group  the  causes  of  social  morality  in  man. 

How  has  morality  been  fostered  by  the  tribe? 

Social  morality,  like  personal  morality,  is  passed  on  from 
generation  to  generation  by  heredity  and  by  imitation. 
Both,  in  historic  man,  are  also  deliberately  cultivated  by 
the  tribe.  We  have  discriminated  between  the  two  aspects 
of  morality  for  theoretic  reasons  which  will  later  become 
apparent;  but  no  discrimination  is  possible  or  needful  for 
the  savage.  Courage  and  prudence  and  industriousness  and 
temperance  in  its  members  are  assets  of  the  tribe,  and  are 
included  among  its  requirements.  We  shall  now  consider  in 
what  ways  the  group  brings  pressure  to  bear  upon  the 
individual  and  influences  his  moral  development. 

(1)  It  needs  no  great  powers  of  observation  to  convince 
the  members  of  a  tribe  severally  that  immorality  of  any 
sort  —  laziness,  cowardice,  unrestrained  lust,  recklessnesSi 
quarrelsomeness,  insubordination,  etc.  —  in  another  mem«> 
ber  is  detrimental  to  him  personally.  His  own  security  and 
the  satisfaction  of  his  needs  are  thereby  in  some  degree 
decreased.  Contentment  at  the  morality  of  the  other 
members  of  the  group,  and  anger  at  their  immorality,  are 
therefore  among  the  earliest  psychological  reactions.    No 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  SOCIAL  MORALITY  21 

men,  however  savage,  are  insensitive  to  these  attitudes  of 
their  fellows;  and  the  emotional  response  of  others  to  their 
acts  is  from  the  beginning  a  powerful  force  for  morality. 
When  contentment  becomes  expUcitly  expressed,  becomes 
praise,  commendation,  honor;  when  anger  becomes  openly 
uttered  blame,  contempt,  ridicule,  rebuke,  their  power  is 
well-nigh  irresistible.  A  civilized  man,  with  his  manifold 
resources,  may  defy  pubUc  opinion;  the  savage,  who  cannot 
with  safety  live  alone  and  has  few  personal  interests  to  fill 
his  mind,  is  unavoidably  subject  to  its  sting.  His  impulses 
and  passions  lead  him  often  to  immoral  conduct,  but  he  is 
pretty  sure  to  suffer  from  the  condemnation  of  his  fellows. 
The  memory  of  that  penalty  in  his  own  case,  or  the  sight  of 
it  in  the  case  of  others,  may  be  a  considerable  deterrent; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  craving  for  applause  and  esteem 
may  be  a  powerful  incentive. 

(2)  Even  among  some  of  the  animals,  the  resentment 
against  the  misconduct  of  a  member  of  the  hera  finds 
expression  in  outward  punishment  —  maltreatment  or 
death.  Among  men,  punishments  for  the  immoral  and  out- 
ward honors  for  the  virtuous  antedate  history.  Decorations, 
tattoos,  songs,  for  the  conspicuously  brave  and  efficient, 
death  or  some  lesser  penalty  for  the  cowardly,  the  traitor- 
ous, the  insubordinate,  figure  largely  in  primitive  life. 
These  honors  are  capricious,  uncertain,  and  transitory;  but 
they  are  undoubtedly  more  stimulating  to  the  savage,  who 
lives  in  the  moment,  than  they  are  in  the  more  complex 
existence  of  the  modem  man.  And  while  in  general  the  sav- 
age is  more  callous  to  punishments,  he  has  to  fear  much 
severer  penalties  than  our  humaner  conscience  allows.  They 
are  inflicted,  of  course,  with  greatest  frequency  for  those 
sins  which  instinctively  arouse  the  hottest  anger;  that  in 
turn  varies  with  different  types  of  men  and  various  acciden- 
tal circumstances  that  have  determined  the  tribal  points  of 


22  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

view.  But  in  general  it  is  the  virtues  that  most  obviously 
benefit  the  tribe  that  are  rewarded,  and  those  that  most 
obviously  harm  it  that  are  punished. 

(3)  Another  important  means  of  securing  morality  in  the 
tribe  is  the  education  of  the  young.  This  includes  not  only 
deliberate  instruction,  encouragement,  and  warning,  but 
various  symbolic  rites  and  customs,  whose  value  in  impress- 
ing the  plastic  minds  of  the  boys  and  girls  of  the  tribe  is  only 
half  realized.  Initiation  into  manhood  is  accompanied  in 
many  races  of  men  by  solemn  ceremonies,  which  instill  into 
the  youth  the  necessity  and  glory  of  courage,  endurance, 
self-control,  and  other  virtues.  The  maidens  are  taught  by 
equally  solemn  rites  the  obligatoriness  of  chastity.  The 
lowest  races  studied  by  anthropologists  —  which,  however, 
represent,  of  course,  the  result  of  ages  of  evolution  —  have 
commonly  an  elaborate  provision  for  the  guidance  of  the 
young  into  the  paths  of  the  tribal  morals. 

(4)  Further,  all  occasions  upon  which  the  tribe  gets 
together  for  common  work  or  play  strengthen  the  group- 
loyalty  and  make  the  group-welfare  appeal  to  the  member 
as  his  own  good.  Hunting  expeditions  and  wars,  the  sowing 
and  reaping  of  the  communal  harvest,  births,  marriages, 
and  deaths,  in  which  usually  the  group  as  a  whole  takes  a 
keen  interest,  feasts  and  dances,  bard-recitals, —  all  com- 
mon undertakings,  dangers,  calamities,  triumphs,  and 
celebrations, —  merge  the  individuality  of  the  separate  mem- 
bers into  a  unity.  In  many  primitive  races  these  influences 
are  so  strong  that  the  individual  has  scarcely  any  separate 
life,  but  lives  irom  childhood  till  death  for  the  tribe  and  its 
welfare. 

(5)  Religion  is,  until  late  in  civilization,  almost  wholly 
a  group  affair.  The  gods  are  tribal  gods,  their  commands 
are  chiefly  the  more  obvious  duties  to  the  tribe.  The  fear  of 
their  displeasure  and  the  hope  of  their  assistance  are  among 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  SOCIAL  MORALITY  23 

the  most  powerful  of  the  sanctions  of  early  morality.  Where 
a  special  set  of  men  are  set  aside  as  priests,  to  foster  the 
religious  consciousness  and  insure  obedience  to  the  divine 
behests,  he  is  rash  who  dares  openly  to  transgress.  The  idea 
of  "taboo"  —  of  certain  acts  which  must  not  be  done,  cer- 
tain objects  which  must  not  be  touched,  etc.  —  is  extraor- 
dinarily prominent  among  many  early  peoples.  The  taboo 
may  not  be  clearly  connected  with  a  divine  prohibition;  but, 
whether  vague  and  mysterious  or  explicit,  it  brings  the  awe 
of  the  supernatural  to  bear  upon  daily  conduct.  The  worship 
of  the  gods  is  one  of  the  most  important  of  the  common 
activities,  covered  by  the  preceding  paragraph,  which  make 
for  the  unifying  of  a  tribe;  and  the  sense  of  their  presence 
and  jealous  interest  in  its  welfare  one  of  the  strongest 
motives  that  restrain  the  individual  from  cowardice  or  lust 
or  any  anti-social  conduct. 

(6)  With  the  development  of  language,  the  moral  experi- 
enc-e  of  a  people  becomes  crystallized  into  maxims,  proverbs, 
and  injunctions,  which  the  elders  pass  on  to  the  boys  and 
girls  together  with  their  comments  and  personal  instruction. 
Oral  precepts  thus  condense  the  gist  of  recurrent  experience 
for  the  benefit  of  each  new  generation.  Such  saws  as 
** Honesty  is  the  best  policy,"  "Lies  are  shortlived,"  "Ill- 
gotten  gains  do  not  prosper,"  date,  no  doubt,  well  back 
toward  the  origin  of  articulate  language.  The  gathering 
antiquity  of  this  inherited  counsel  adds  prestige  to  the  per- 
sonal authority  of  the  old  men  who  love  to  repeat  it;  and  the 
customs  once  instinctive  and  unconsciously  imitated,  or 
adopted  from  fear  and  the  hope  of  praise,  are  now  consciously 
cultivated  as  intrinsically  desirable.  There  is,  of  course, 
very  little  realization  of  why  some  acts  are  commended  and 
others  prohibited;  the  mere  fact  that  such  and  such  are  the 
tribal  customs,  that  thus  and  so  things  have  been  done,  is 
•nough.     Primitive  peoples  are  highly  conservative  and 


24  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

afraid  of  innovation.  So  that  the  moral  habits  which  were 
estabHshed  before  the  age  of  reflection  and  articulate  speech 
remain  for  the  most  part  after  they  have  become  crystallized 
into  precepts  and  commands,  and  by  this  articulating  proc- 
ess become  much  more  firmly  intrenched.  Then  from  the 
existence  of  miscellaneous  maxims  and  prohibitions,  taught 
by  the  elders  and  linked  with  whatever  impulsive  and  hap- 
hazard punishments  are  customary,  to  the  formulation  of 
legal  codes,  with  definite  penalties  attached  to  specific 
infringements,  is  an  easy  transition.  With  the  invention  of 
written  language  these  laws  could  become  still  better  fixed 
and  more  clearly  known.  The  appointment  of  certain  men 
of  authority  as  judges,  to  investigate  alleged  cases  of  trans- 
gression and  award  the  proper  penalties,  completes  the  evo- 
lution of  a  civilized  legal  system,  the  most  powerful  of  all 
deterrents  from  flagrantly  anti-social  acts. 

Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics,  chaps,  n,  in.  H.  Spencer,  Data  qf 
Ethics,  chap,  ii,  sees.  5,  6.  J.  Fiske,  Cosmic  Philosophy,  pt.  ii, 
chap.  XXII,  second  half.  A.  Sutherland,  Origin  and  Growth  of  the 
Moral  Instinct,  vol.  i.  C.  S.  Wake,  Evolution  of  Morality,  vol.  i, 
chaps.  V,  VI,  vn.  P.  V.  N.  Myers,  History  as  Past  Ethics,  chap.  i. 
P.  Kropotkin,  Mutual  Aid,  chaps,  i-rv.  L.  T.  Hobhouse,  Morals  in 
Evolution,  pt.  I,  chaps,  i-iii.  Westermarck,  op.  cit.,  chap,  xxxiv. 
J.  Fiske,  Through  Nature  to  God,  pt.  ii,  "The  Cosmic  Roots  of  Love 
and  Self-Sacrifice."  C.  Read,  Natural  and  Social  Morals,  chap.  m. 
W.  I.  Thomas,  Source  Book  of  Social  Origins. 

On  the  morality  of  animals,  see:  M.  F.  Washburn,  The  Animal 
Mind.  E.  L.  Thorndike,  Animal  Intelligence.  August  Forel,  Ants 
and  Some  Other  Insects.  C.  Lloyd  Morgan,  Animal  Behavior.  L.  T. 
Hobhouse,  The  Intelligence  of  Animals.  E.  P.  Evaus,  Evolutional 
Ethics  and  Animal  Psychology. 


CHAPTER  III 

OUTWARD  DEVELOPMENT  — MORALS 

What  is  the  difference  between  morals  and  non-moral 
customs? 

Morality,  before  it  is  a  matter  of  legal  prescription  or  of 
reflective  insight,  is  a  matter  of  instinctive  and  unconsciously 
imitated  habit.  That  this  is  so  is  shown  by  the  fact  that 
many  ethical  terms  are  by  their  etymology  connected  with 
the  idea  of  custom.  '*  Morals  "  and  "morahty  "  are  from  the 
Latin  mores,  usually  translated  "customs,"  *' ethics,'*  from 
a  Greek  root  of  similar  sense.  The  German  Sitten  has  the 
same  fused  meanings.  Most  of  our  present-day  morahty 
is  a  matter  of  custom  or  convention;  and  there  are  those 
who  make  a  complete  identification  of  the  two  concepts, 
morality  being  simply  to  them  conventional  habits  of 
conduct. 

But  a  little  thought  will  show  that  there  is  a  distinction 
in  our  common  usage;  the  two  categories  overlap,  but  are 
not  identical.  On  the  one  hand,  our  highest  moral  ideals 
have  never  become  customary;  we  long,  in  our  best  moments, 
to  make  them  habitual,  but  seldom  actually  attain  them. 
The  morals  of  Jesus,  of  Buddha,  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  have 
never  become  habits  with  any  but  the  saints,  yet  we  recog- 
nize them  as  the  high-water  mark  of  human  morality.  On 
the  other  hand,  many  of  our  customs  have  no  moral  aspect. 
I  may  have  a  fixed  habit  of  going  from  my  home  to  my 
office  by  a  certain  one  out  of  a  number  of  equally  advan- 
tageous routes.  All  of  the  members  of  my  set  may  habitu- 
ally pronounce  a  given  word  in  a  certain  way  rather  than  in 


iS6  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

an  alternative  manner  equally  correct.  But  about  such 
habits  there  is  nothing  moral  or  immoral. 

In  a  word,  morals  are  customs  thai  matter,  oi'  are  supposed 
to  matter  ;  standards  to  which  each  member  of  a  group  is  ex- 
pected by  the  other  members  to  conform,  and  for  the  neglect 
of  which  he  is  punished,  frowned  upon,  scorned,  or  blamed. 
Toward  these  standards  he  feels,  therefore,  a  vague  or 
definite  pressure,  the  reflection  in  him  of  the  feelings  of  his 
fellows.  The  line  between  mere  habits  or  manners  and 
morals  is  differently  drawn  in  different  times  and  places, 
according  to  the  differing  ideas  as  to  what  matters.  The 
same  actions  which  are  moral  to  one  conununity  (i.e., 
arouse  feelings  or  judgments  of  commendation)  may  be 
immoral  to  another  community  (i.e.,  arouse  reprobation 
or  scorn)  and  non-moral  to  a  third  (i.e.,  arouse  no  such 
response  at  all) .  For  example,  in  one  tribe  tattooing  may  be 
a  mere  matter  of  personal  liking,  of  no  importance  and  with 
no  group- judgment  upon  it;  yet  certain  habits  with  regard 
to  it  may  become  widespread.  In  another  tribe  certain 
tattoos  may  be  thought  to  be  enjoined  by  the  god,  and  their 
neglect  deemed  a  matter  of  serious  importance  to  the  tribe 
as  a  whole;  tattooing  may  here  be  said  to  be  a  part  of  the 
tribal  morals.  To  us  moderns  it  is  probably  a  morally  indif- 
ferent affair;  but  if  we  should  learn  it  to  be  seriously  deleteri- 
ous to  the  body,  it  would  again  become  a  moral  matter.  In 
short,  morals  are  customs  that  affect,  or  are  supposed  to 
affect,  a  man's  life  or  that  of  his  tribe  for  weal  or  woe. 

Obviously,  this  discrimination  is  not  consciously  made 
by  savages;  indeed,  to  this  day,  such  distinctions  are  envel- 
oped in  a  haze  for  the  average  man.  Men  do  not  realize  the 
raison  d'etre  of  morals.  They  follow  them  because  their 
fathers  did  or  their  fellows  do;  because  they  inherit  instincts 
that  drive  them  in  their  direction  or  inevitably  imitate  those 
who  have  formed  th(j  habitii  before;  because  they  feel  a 


OU'nVARD  DEVELOPMENT  —  MORALS  27 

pressure  toward  them  and  are  uncomfortable  if  they  hold 
out  against  it.  When  pressed  for  a  justification  of  their 
conduct,  they  are  usually  surprised  at  the  inquiry;  such 
action  seems  obviously  the  thing  to  do,  and  that  is  the  end 
of  it.  Or  they  will  hit  upon  some  of  the  secondary  sanctions 
that  have  grown  up  about  these  habits  —  the  penalties  of 
the  law,  the  commandment  of  the  gods,  or  what  not.  But 
with  our  resources  of  analysis  and  reflection,  it  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  discern  that  the  various  forces  at  work  have  been 
such  as  to  preserve,  in  general,  habits  which  made  for  the 
welfare  of  individual  or  tribe  and  discard  the  harmful  ones. 
It  is,  then,  not  merely  habits,  but  habits  that  matter,  moral 
habits,  with  whose  growth  and  alteration  we  are  here 
concerned. 

What,  in  general,  has  been  the  direction  of  moral  progress? 

We  have  noted  the  main  causes  at  work  in  the  production 
of  morahty;  we  now  ask  in  what  general  direction  these 
forces  push.  We  have  in  mind  the  concrete  virtues  which 
have  been  developed;  but  what  common  function  have 
tliese  habits  of  conduct,  so  produced,  had  in  human  life? 
What  has  been  the  net  result  of  the  process? 

At  first  sight  a  generalized  answer  seems  impossible.  All 
sorts  of  chance  causes  bring  about  local  alterations  in  morals. 
The  momentary  dominance  of  an  impulse  ordinarily  weak, 
the  whim  of  a  ruler,  the  self-interest  of  classes,  superstitious 
interpretation  of  omens,  the  attribution  of  some  success  to  a 
prior  act  which  may  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  it  —  such 
accidental  and  irrational  sources  of  morals,  and  the  resulting 
codes,  are  nmnberless.  But  as  in  the  process  of  organic 
evolution  the  various  obscure  physiological  alterations 
which  produce  variations  of  type  are  all  overruled  and 
guided  in  a  few  directions  of  value  to  the  species  by  the  law 
of  natural  selection,  so  in  the  evolution  of  morahty  the  con- 


28  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

stant  changes  in  all  directions  are  subject  to  the  law  of  the 
survival  of  the  fittest.  It  is  really  of  comparatively  little 
importance  to  discover  how  a  given  moral  habit  first  arose; 
it  may  have  arisen  in  a  hundred  different  ways  in  a  hundred 
different  places;  indeed,  the  precise  origin  of  most  of  the 
cardinal  virtues  lies  too  far  back  in  the  mists  of  the  past  to 
be  traced  with  assurance.  But  the  important  truth  to 
observe  is  not  the  particular  details  of  their  haphazard 
origin  but  the  causes  of  their  survival.  Overlaying  the  count- 
less originating-causes  of  moral  ideals  are  two  main  preser- 
vation-causes, two  constant  factors  which  retain  certain  of 
the  innumerable  impulses  for  one  reason  or  other  momen- 
tarily dominant.  These  are  of  extreme  significance  for  a 
comprehension  of  the  function  of  morality  in  life. 

(1)  In  the  first  place,  a  certain  number  of  these  blind, 
hit-or-miss  experiments  in  conduct  were,  as  we  have  seen,  of 
use  to  individuals  or  the  tribe  in  increasing  their  chances  of 
survival  in  the  ceaseless  rivalry  for  life.  The  inclemencies 
of  nature  and  the  enmity  of  the  beasts  and  other  men  kill 
more  often  the  less  moral  than  the  more  moral.  So  that  in 
general  and  in  the  long  run  those  that  developed  the  higher 
moral  habits  outlived  the  others  and  transmitted  their 
morals  to  the  future.  Even  within  historic  times  this  same 
weeding-out  process  has  been  observable.  On  the  whole, 
the  races  and  the  individuals  with  the  more  advanced  moral 
standards  survive,  while  those  of  lower  standards  perish. 
This  law  accounts,  for  instance,  in  some  measure  probably 
for  the  relatively  greater  increase  of  whites  than  of  negroes 
in  the  United  States,  in  spite  of  the  higher  birth-rate  of  the 
latter.  Other  causes  are,  to  be  sure,  also  at  work  in  this 
competition  for  life;  for  one  thing,  the  long  period  of  inter- 
communication between  European  races  has  largely  weeded 
out  the  stocks  most  liable  to  certain  diseases,  while  the 
antecedent  isolation  of  savage  tribes,  with  no  such  elimina- 


OUTWARD  DEVELOPMENT  —  MORALS  S9 

tion  at  work,  allows  them  to  fall  victims  in  greater  numbers 
to  Em'opean  diseases  when  mutual  contact  is  established. 
But  the  degree  of  the  morahzation  of  a  people  has  been 
certainly  one  of  the  criteria  of  survival;  and  thus  by  a  purely 
mechanical  elimination  mankind  has  grown  more  and  more 
moral.  It  hardly  needs  to  be  added  that  the  conscious 
selection  of  codes  that  tend  to  preserve  life  is  a  factor  of 
growing  importance  in  insuring  movement  in  this  same  direc- 
tion. Altogether,  moral  progress  consists  primarily  in  an 
increasing  adaptation  of  codes  to  the  preservation  of  life. 

(2)  Morahty,  however,  makes  not  only  for  life,  thus 
insuring  its  own  perpetuation;  it  makes  also  for  happiness. 
Arbitrary  and  tyrannous  rules,  cruel  or  needlessly  prohibi- 
tive customs,  engender  restlessness,  and  are  not  stable.  Such 
barbarous  morals  may  long  persist,  propped  by  the  power  of 
the  rulers,  the  superstitions  of  the  people,  and  all  the  forces 
of  conservatism;  but  sooner  or  later  they  breed  rebellion 
and  are  cast  aside.  On  the  other  hand,  more  rational  codes 
promote  peace  and  security,  banish  fear  and  hatred,  and 
make  for  all  the  benefits  of  civilization.  Such  codes  are  in 
relatively  more  stable  equilibrium  and  gradually  tend  to 
replace  the  others.  All  morahty  is,  of  course,  in  one  aspect, 
a  restraint  upon  desire,  a  check  upon  impulse;  rebelliousness 
against  its  decrees  will  be  perpetually  recurrent  until  human 
nature  itself  is  completely  refashioned  and  men  have  no 
inordinate  and  dangerous  desires.  But  while  all  codes  of 
conduct  are  repressive  at  the  moment  of  passion,  they  vary 
widely  in  the  degree  in  which  they  satisfy  or  thwart  man's 
deeper  needs.  Such  institutions  as  the  gladiatorial  games  of 
Rome,  human  sacrifice,  or  slavery,  were  fruitful  of  so  much 
pain  that  they  were  bound  in  time  to  perish.  In  contrast 
with  these  cruel  customs,  the  prohibitions  of  the  Jewish  law 
—  the  Ten  Commandments,  for  example  —  were  so  humane, 
so  productive  of  security  and  concord  and  a  deep-rooted  and 


30  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

lasting  satisfaction,  that  they  persisted  and  became  the 
parent  of  much  of  our  present-day  morahty.  An  increasing 
part  in  this  progress  has  been  played  by  the  conscious  recog- 
nition of  the  advantages  of  code  over  code;  but  long  before 
such  explicit  perception  of  advantage,  the  blind  instincts 
and  emotions  of  men  were  making  for  the  gradual  humaniz- 
ing of  morals,  the  selection  of  ideals  and  laws  that  make  for 
human  happiness. 

As  civilization  advances,  the  consideration  of  mere  pres- 
ervation counts  for  less,  and  that  of  happiness  for  more; 
the  margin,  the  breathing-space,  for  liberal  interests,  grows. 
Men  become  interested  in  causes  for  which  they  willingly 
risk  their  lives.  But,  except  as  these  causes  are  fanatical,  off 
the  real  track  of  moral  progress,  they  make  for  human 
happiness.  And  the  center  of  interest  can  never  shift  too  far. 
For  not  only  is  premature  death  an  evil  in  itself,  it  precludes 
the  cultivation  of  the  humane  pursuits  that  life  might  have 
allowed.  Men  have  to  learn  to  find  their  happiness  not  in 
what  saps  health  or  invites  death,  but  in  what  makes  for 
health  and  life. 

What  definition  of  morality  emerges  from  this? 

The  foregoing  summary  permits  us  to  formulate  a  defini- 
tion of  morality.  Historically,  there  has  been  a  gradual, 
though  not  continuous,  progress  toward  codes  of  conduct 
which  make  for  the  preservation  of  life  and  for  happiness. 
These  codes  have  received  an  imaginative  consecration,  and 
all  sorts  of  secondary  sanctions;  but  it  is  their  underlying 
utility  that  is  of  ultimate  importance.  Very  simple  and 
obvious  causes  have  continually  tended  to  destroy  customs 
which  made  in  the  contrary  direction  and  to  select  those 
which,  however  originating,  made  for  either  or  both  of  these 
two  ends.   It  is  tJicse  customs,  important  for  the  welfare  of 


OUTWARD  DEVELOPMENT  —  MORALS  81 

the  individual  or  tribe,  which  we  call  morality.  If  the 
original  instincts  of  mankind  had  been  delicately  enough 
adjusted  to  their  needs,  there  would  have  been  no  need  of 
these  secondary  and  overruling  impulses,  and  the  differentia- 
tion of  impulse  and  duty,  of  the  natural  and  the  spiritual 
man,  would  never  have  arisen.  But  actually,  mankind 
inherited  from  its  brute  an?estry  instincts  which,  unguided, 
wrought  great  harm.  Without  the  development  of  some 
system  of  checks  men  would  forever  have  been  the  prey  of 
overindulgence,  sexual  wantonness,  civil  strife,  and  apathy. 
They  would  have  remained  beasts  and  never  won  their 
dominance  on  the  earth.  Even  rudimentary  moral  codes 
came  as  an  amelioration  of  this  dangerous  and  unhappy 
situation;  they  enabled  men,  by  abstention  from  dangerous 
passions  and  from  idleness,  to  make  their  lives  efficient, 
interesting,  and  comparatively  free  from  pain;  by  coopera- 
tion and  mutual  service  to  resist  their  enemies  and  develop 
a  civilization.  Morality  thus  has  been  the  greatest  instru- 
ment of  progress,  the  most  fundamental  of  man's  achieve- 
ments, the  most  important  part  of  the  wisdom  of  the  race. 

Is  moral  progress  certain? 

A  measure  of  hopefulness  is  to  be  won  from  the  observa- 
tion that,  quite  apart  from  the  conscious  effort  of  men, 
uatural  laws  have  been  making  for  moral  progress.  And 
unquestionably  there  has  been  a  great  advance  in  morality 
within  historic  times.  We  are  forever  past  the  age  of  canni- 
balism, of  slavery,  of  widespread  human  torture  or  infanti- 
cide. War  betw^een  nations  is  likely  to  vanish  within  a  few 
generations.  Never  before  was  there  so  much  sympathy,  so 
much  conscious  dedication  to  human  service,  in  the  w^orld 
We  are  apt  to  ideahze  the  past;  we  sigh  for  a  "return  to  na- 
ture," or  to  the  golden  age  of  Greece.  And  there  is  some 
justification  in  our  regrets.  Simphcity  of  living,  hospitality, 


32  THE  EVOI-UTION  OF  MORALITY 

courage,  patriotism  —  one  virtue  or  another  has  been  more 
conspicuous  in  some  particular  age  than  ever  before  or  since. 
Moral  progress  wavers,  and  not  all  that  is  won  is  retained. 
But  on  the  whole  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  we  stand  on  a 
higher  level  morally  than  the  Greeks  —  who  had  vices  and 
sins  that  we  scarcely  hear  of  to-day  —  and  incomparably 
higher  than  savage  races.  Even  within  a  lifetime  one  can 
see  the  wave  of  moral  advance  push  forward. 

Yet  this  observable  progress  is  not  so  certain  of  continu- 
ance that  we  can  lapse  into  inertia  and  trust  it  to  go  on  of 
itself.  With  the  softening  of  the  struggle  for  existence  among 
men,  with  the  disappearance  of  danger  from  wild  animals, 
and  the  increasing  conquest  over  nature,  the  chief  means  of 
moral  progress  hitherto  are  being  removed.  More  and  more 
we  must  rely  on  man's  conscious  efforts  —  on  personal  con- 
secration and  self-mastery,  on  improved  and  extended  legis- 
lation, on  the  growth  of  a  moralized  public  opinion,  on 
organizations  and  institutions  that  shall  work  for  specific 
causes. 

Moreover,  with  the  changing  situations  in  which  man 
finds  himself,  and  especially  with  the  growing  complexifica- 
tion  of  society,  new  opportunities  for  sin  and  new  tempta- 
tions continually  arise.  No  sooner  is  one  immoral  habit 
stamped  out  than  another  begins  insidiously,  and  perhaps 
unnoticed,  to  form.  The  battle-line  moves  on,  but  new  foes 
constantly  appear;  it  will  not  be  an  easy  road  to  the  millen- 
nium. On  the  whole,  our  material  and  intellectual  advance 
has  outrun  our  moral  progress;  at  present  our  chief  need  is 
to  catch  up  morally.  ^  We  may  note  several  reasons  for  this 
eddy  in  the  moralizing  process,   this  counter-movement 

^  Cf.  Alfred  Russel  Wallace,  in  his  last  book.  Social  Environment  and 
Moral  Progress  (p.  50):  "This  rapid  growth  of  wealth  and  increase  of  our 
power  over  Nature  put  too  great  a  strain  upon  our  crude  civilization  and 
our  superficial  Christianity;  and  it  was  accompanied  by  various  forms  of 
social  immorality,  almost  as  amazing  and  uni)rcccdcnted." 


OUTW^ARD   DEVELOPMENT  — MORALS  33 

toward  the  development  of  new  sins  and  the  renascence  of 
old  ones. 

(1)  With  the  growth  of  large  cities  and  the  development 
of  individual  interests  we  come  to  live  less  and  less  in  one 
another's  eyes.  In  primitive  life  it  is  almost  impossible  for 
a  man  to  indulge  in  any  vice  or  sin  without  its  being  immedi- 
ately known  to  his  fellows;  but  to-day  millions  live  such 
isolated  lives  in  the  midst  of  crowded  communities  that  all 
sorts  of  immorality  may  flourish  without  detection.  Under 
early  conditions  foodstuffs  or  other  goods  were  consumed  if 
not  by  the  producer,  at  least  by  his  neighbors;  and  any 
adulteration  or  sham  was  a  dangerous  matter.  To-day  we 
seldom  know  who  slaughtered  the  meat  or  canned  the  fruit 
we  eat,  who  made  the  clothing  or  utensils  we  use;  shoddy 
articles  and  unwholesome  food  can  be  sold  in  quantity  with 
little  fear  of  the  consumer's  anger.  All  sorts  of  intangible 
and  hardly  traceable  injuries  can  be  wrought  to-day  by 
malicious  or  careless  men  —  injuries  to  reputation,  to  credit, 
to  success.  In  a  city  the  criminal  can  hide  and  escape  far 
more  easily,  can  associate  with  his  own  kind,  have  a  certain 
code  of  his  own  (cf.  "honor  among  thieves"),  and  more 
completely  escape  the  pangs  of  conscience,  than  under  the 
sur\^eillance  of  village  life.  In  a  hundred  ways  there  are 
increased  opportunities  for  doing  evil  with  impunity.  ^ 

^  Cf.  E.  A.  Ross,  Sin  and  Society,  pp.  S2ff.:  "The  popular  symbol  for  the 
criminal  is  a  ravening  wolf;  but  alas,  few  latter-day  crimes  can  be  drama- 
tized with  a  wolf  and  a  lamb  as  the  cast !  Your  up-to-date  criminal  presses 
the  button  of  a  social  mechanism,  and  at  the  other  end  of  the  land  or  the 
year  innocent  lives  are  snuffed  out.  ...  As  society  grows  complex,  it  can 
be  harmed  in  more  ways.  .  .  .  Each  advance  to  higher  organization  runs 
us  into  a  fresh  zone  of  danger,  so  there  is  more  than  ever  need  to  be  quick 
to  detect  and  foil  the  new  public  enemies  that  present  themselves.  .  .  . 
The  public  needs  a  victim  to  harrow  up  its  feelings.  .  .  .  The  injury  that 
is  problematic,  or  general,  or  that  falls  in  undefined  ways  upon  unknown 
persons,  is  resented  feebly,  or  not  at  all.  The  fiend  who  should  rack  his 
victim  with  torments  such  as  typhoid  inflicts  would  be  torn  to  pieces.  The 
villain  who  should  taint  his  enemy's  cup  with  fever  germs  would  stretch 


84  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

(2)  With  the  gentler  conditions  of  civilized  life  there  is  a 
general  tendency  toward  the  relaxing  of  social  restraints. 
The  harsh  penalties  of  early  days  would  shock  us  by  their 
cruelty;  and  early  codes  are  full  of  prohibitions  and  injunc- 
tions on  matters  which  are  now  left  to  the  individual  con- 
science. Needlessly  cramping  and  cruel  as  these  primitive 
laws  often  were,  they  were  powerful  deterrents,  and  their 
lapse  has  often  been  followed  by  greater  moral  laxity.  The 
passionate  pursuit  of  liberty,  which  has  been  so  prominent 
in  modern  times,  though  on  the  whole  of  great  advantage  to 
man,  has  not  been  without  its  ill  effects. 

(3)  The  monotonously  specialized  and  unnatural  work 
which  confines  a  large  proportion  of  our  men,  women,  and 
youths  to-day,  promotes  restlessness  and  the  craving  for 
excitement.  The  normal  all-round  occupations  of  primitive 
men  tended  to  work  off  their  energies  and  satisfy  their  nat- 
ural impulses.  But  the  dulled  and  tired  worker  released  from 
eight  or  ten  hours'  di-udgery  in  a  factory  is  apt  to  be  in 
a  psychological  state  that  demands  variety,  excitement, 
pleasure  at  any  cost.  It  does  not  pay  to  repress  human  na- 
ture too  much,  or  to  try  to  make  out  of  a  red-blooded  young 
man  or  woman  a  mere  machine.  GambHng,  drunkenness, 
prostitution,  and  all  sorts  of  pathological  vices  flourish 
largely  as  a  reaction  from  the  dullness  and  monotony  of  the 
day's  work.  We  are  paying  this  heavy  penalty  for  our 
increase  of  material  efficiency  at  the  expense  of  normal 
human  living. 

(4)  With  the  increased  possibilities  of  imdetected  sin, 
above  mentioned,  and  the  opportunity  which  criminals  now 
have  of  forming  within  a  city  a  Uttle  community  of  their  own 

hemp.  But  —  think  of  it!  —  the  corrupt  boss  who,  in  order  to  extort  fat 
contracts  for  his  firm,  holds  up  for  a  year  the  building  of  a  filtration  plant 
designed  to  deliver  his  city  from  the  typhoid  scourge,  and  thereby  dooms 
twelve  himdred  of  his  townspeople  to  sink  to  the  tomb  through  the  flaming 
abyss  of  fever,  comes  off  scatheless." 


OUTWARD  DEVELOPMENT  —  MORALS  85 

which  permits  them  fellowship  without  rebuke  for  their  sins, 
there  have  arisen  whole  classes  of  vice-caterers.  These  men 
and  women  make  their  living  by  tempting  others  to  sin; 
the  allurements  which  *hey  set  before  the  young  constitute 
a  great  check  to  moral  advance,  and  even  threaten  continu- 
ally a  serious  moral  degeneration.  The  keepers  of  gambling- 
houses  and  brothels,  the  venders  of  habit-forming  drugs, 
vile  pictures,  and  salacious  reading  matter,  the  proprietors 
of  indecent  dance-halls  and  theaters,  of  the  "shows"  of  all 
sorts  that  flourish  chiefly  through  their  offering  of  sexual 
stimulation  —  these  are  the  worst  sinners  of  our  times,  for 
they  cause  thousands  of  others  to  sin,  and  deliberately 
undermine  the  moral  structure  so  laboriously  reared,  and  at 
such  heavy  cost.  Conspicuous  in  commercialized  vice- 
catering  is  the  Casino  of  Monte  Carlo,  where  thousands  of 
lives  have  been  ruined.  The  business  of  seducing  and  kid- 
napping girls  —  the  "  white-slave  trade  " — flourishes  secretly 
in  our  great  cities.  Associations  of  liquor  dealers  are  in  many 
countries  powerful  social  and  political  forces.  One  of  the 
greatest  problems  before  the  race  is  how  to  exterminate 
these  human  beasts  of  prey  that  live  at  the  expense  of  the 
moral  deterioration  and  often  utter  ruin  of  their  victims. 

(5)  \Miile  the  older  racial  and  national  barriers  between 
peoples  are  breaking  down,  so  that  the  possibilities  of  human 
brotherhood  and  cooperation  are  laterally  increasing,  and  the 
wretched  fratricidal  wars  between  peoples  coming  toward 
an  end,^  other  barriers,  between  upper  and  lower  classes,  are 
thickening,  new  antagonisms  and  antipathies,  that  threaten 
yet  much  friction  and  unhappiness  and  a  retardation  of 
moral  progress.    Rich  are  becoming  farther  and  farther 

*  In  view  of  the  Great  War  and  the  ensuing  crop  of  lesser  wars  this  may 
sound  like  irony.  And  no  one  can  be  sure  that  worse  may  not  follow. 
Nevertheless  we  may  be  pretty  confident,  for  several  reasons,  that  the  age 
of  international  wars  is  approaching  its  end. 


36  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

separated  from  poor,  class-consciousness  is  on  the  increasa 
class-wars  in  the  form  of  strikes,  riots,  and  sabotage,  ar^ 
ominous  symptoms.  Masses  of  the  laboring  class  believe 
that  a  great  class-war  is  not  only  inevitable  but  desirable. 
Such  conflicts,  however,  besides  their  material  losses, 
engender  hatred,  cruelty,  lust,  greed,  and  all  sorts  of  other 
forms  of  immorality.  No  one  can  predict  how  far  such 
struggles  may  go  in  the  future  toward  undoing  the  socializing 
process  which  at  best  has  so  many  obstacles  to  meet  and 
moves  so  slowly. 

Many  forces  are  at  work,  however,  for  moral  uplift.  The 
spread  of  education,  teaching  men  to  think,  to  discern  evils, 
and  to  comprehend  the  reasons  for  right  conduct,  the 
increasing  influence  of  public  opinion  through  newspapers 
and  magazines,  the  growing  number  of  organizations  work- 
ing to  eradicate  evils,  the  gradual  increase  of  wise  legislation, 
the  reviving  moral  pressure  of  the  Christian  Church  —  such 
signs  of  the  times  should  give  us  courage  as  well  as  show  us 
where  we  can  take  hold  to  help.  Morality  is  not  static,  a 
cut-and-dried  system  to  be  obeyed  or  neglected,  but  a  set  of 
experiments,  being  gradually  worked  out  by  mankind,  a 
dynamic,  progressive  instrument  which  we  can  help  our' 
selves  to  forge.  There  is  room  yet  for  moral  genius;  we  are 
yet  in  the  early  and  formative  stage  of  human  morality.  We 
should  not  be  content  with  past  achievement,  with  the 
contemporary  standards  of  our  fellows.  If  we  give  our  keen- 
est thought  and  our  earnest  effort,  there  is  no  knowing  what 
noble  heights  of  morality  we  may  be  helping  the  future  to 
attain. 

Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics,  chap.  iv.  Hobhouse,  op.  cit.,  pt.  n, 
chaps.  II,  VIII.  Westermarck,  op.  cit.,  chap.  vii.  Sutherland,  op. 
cit.,  vol.  n.,  chaps,  xix-xxi.  W.  G.  Sumner,  Fnlkvmys,  chaps,  i,  ii, 
XI.  Sir  II.  Maine,  Village  Communities.  C  Darwin,  Descent  of  Man, 


OUTW^ARD  DEVELOPMENT  —  MORALS  87 

pt.  I,  chap.  V.  J.  G.  Schurman,  Ethical  Import  of  Darwinism, 
W.  I.  Thomas,  Source  Book  for  Social  Origins,  pt.  vn.  C.  Read, 
Natural  and  Social  Morals,  chap.  vi.  I.  Eang,  Development  of  Re* 
ligioji,  chap.  xi. 

On  the  question  of  moral  progress:  Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics, 
pp.  187-92.  W.  Bageliot,  Physics  and  Politics,  chap.  vi.  H.  G. 
Wells,  New  Worlds  for  Old,  chap,  i,  sees.  2-4.  J.  Bryce,  in  the 
Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  100,  p.  145.  E.  Root,  The  Citizen's  Part  in 
Government,  pp.  96-123.  J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Manual  of  Ethics  (2d  ed.), 
chap.  XV.  A.  R.  Wallace,  Social  Environment  and  Moral  Progress, 
W.  M.  F.  Petrie,  The  Revolutions  of  Civilization.  W.  H.  Hamilton, 
Current  Economic  Problems,  pp.  76-83.  Henry  Van  Dyke,  Essays 
in  Application,  chap.  i.  J.  Dewey,  in  International  Journal  of  Ethics, 
vol.  26,  p.  311.  F.  Younghusband,  Mutual  Influence,  chap.  vi.  E.  B. 
McGilvary,  in  Hihbert  Journal,  vol.  14,  p.  43.  Also  Hihbert  Jour- 
nal, vol.  10,  pp.  179,  273,  472,  599,  925.  H.  N.  ChitteMen,  in 
Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  109,  p.  777. 


CHAPTER  IV 

INWARD  DEVELOPMENT  — CONSCIENCE 

What  are  the  stages  in  the  history  of  moral  guidance? 

There  may  be  said  to  be  five  stages  in  the  history  of 
moral  guidance:  guidance  by  instinct,  by  custom,  by  law 
and  precept,  by  conscience,  and  by  insight.  No  one  of  these 
guides  is  discarded  with  the  development  of  the  others;  we 
rely  to-day  upon  all  of  them  in  varying  degree.  Their  evoluv 
tion  overlaps;  the  alteration  of  instinct  still  goes  on,  chang- 
ing laws  and  customs  still  bring  their  pressure  to  bear  from 
without  upon  the  individual;  while  our  conscience  and  our 
insight  have  their  roots  far  back  in  the  past.  Yet  the  promi- 
nence of  each  of  these  factors  in  turn  marks  a  successive 
stage  in  the  evolution  of  moral  control.  Inherited  instinct, 
and  then  custom,  unconsciously  passed  on  by  imitation  and 
to  some  extent  taught  with  a  dimly  conscious  purpose, 
shape  the  crude  morality  of  the  animals  —  though  the  other 
means  of  guidance  are  not  wholly  absent  even  in  them. 
Among  savages  legal  codes,  unwritten  and  perhaps  not  even 
clearly  formulated,  yet  exacting  and  strictly  enforced  by 
penalties,  come  to  form  an  important  supplement  to  instinct, 
custom,  and  proverbial  wisdom.  But  quite  as  important  is 
the  gradual  development  of  an  inward  guide  —  those  very 
various  secondary  impulses  and  inhibitions  which  we  lump 
together  because  of  their  common  function  and  call  the 
moral  sense  or  conscience.  We  shall  now  consider  briefly 
the  origin  of  this  internal  steering-apparatus.  The  latest 
and  most  mature  guide  of  all,  reflective  insight,  arisen 
in  marked  degree  only  when  men  become  accustomed  to 


INWARD  DEVELOPMENT  —  CONSCIENCE  39 

abstraction  and  analysis.  There  is  no  problem  connected 
with  its  origin  except  the  general  problems  of  the  develop- 
ment of  human  reason.  How  moral  insight  may  be  trained 
and  brought  to  bear  upon  conduct  will,  it  is  hoped,  be  cleai 
to  the  student  who  patiently  studies  this  volume. 

Out  of  what  has  conscience  developed? 

The  "conscience"  of  our  moralizing  and  religious  litera- 
ture figures  as  a  sharply  defined  and  easily  recognizable 
"faculty,"  like  "will"  or  "reason."  But  this  classification, 
though  useful,  is  misleading  by  its  simplicity.  If  we  observe 
by  introspection  what  goes  on  in  our  minds  when  we  "will" 
or  "reason"  or  "listen  to  conscience,"  we  shall  find  all 
sorts  of  emotions,  ideas,  impulses,  surging  back  and  forth, 
altering  from  moment  to  moment,  never  twice  the  same. 
At  another  period  of  our  lives,  or  in  another  man's  mind,  the 
psychological  stuff  pigeonholed  under  these  names  may  be 
almost  entirely  different.  A  great  many  diverse  mental 
elements  have  at  one  time  or  other  taken  the  role  of,  or 
formed  an  ingredient  in,  the  function  we  label  "conscience." 
We  will  enumerate  the  more  important :  — 

(1)  Experience  quickly  teaches  her  pupils  that  certain 
acts  to  which  they  feel  a  strong  impulse  will  lead  to  an 
aftermath  of  pain  or  weariness,  or  will  stand  in  the  way  of 
other  goods  which  they  more  lastingly  desire  or  more  deeply 
need.  The  memory  of  these  consequences  of  acts  remains 
as  a  guide  for  future  conduct,  not  so  often  in  the  form  of  a 
clearly  recognized  memory  as  in  a  dim  realization  that  the 
dangerous  act  must  be  avoided,  a  vague  pressure  against 
the  pull  of  momentary  inclination,  or  an  uncomprehended 
feeling  of  impulsion  toward  the  less  inviting  path.  ThL^s 
residuum  of  the  moral  experience  of  the  individual  is  one 
ingredient  in  what  we  call  his  conscience. 

(2)  But  there  is  much  more  than  this.   The  individual  is 


40  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

a  member  of  a  group.  The  customs  and  expectations  of  this 
group  not  only  bear  upon  him  from  without  but  find  a 
reflection  in  his  own  motor-mechanism.  He  hears  the  voice 
of  the  community  in  his  heart,  an  echo  of  the  general  con- 
demnation and  approval.  This  acquired  response,  the  rever- 
beration of  the  group- judgment,  may  easily  supplant  his 
personal  inclinations.  Primitive  man  is  sensitive  to  the 
judgments  and  emotional  reactions  of  his  fellows;  the  tribal 
point  of  view  is  unquestioned  and  authoritative  over  him. 
So  important  is  this  pressure  in  his  mental  life,  though  not 
understood  or  recognized  for  what  it  is,  that  conscience  is 
defined  by  many  morahsts  as  the  pressure  of  the  judgment 
of  the  tribe  in  the  mental  life  of  its  members,  or  in  similar 
terms.  Paulsen  calls  it  "the  existence  of  custom  in  the 
consciousness  of  the  individual.'*  This  is  to  neglect  unjustly 
the  other  sources  of  the  sense  of  duty;  but  certainly  the 
pulls  and  pushes  arising  from  these  two  sources,  which  we 
may  call  the  inner  aspect  of  individual  moral  experience  and 
of  loyalty  to  the  community-morals,  reinforcing  one  another 
as  they  generally  do,  produce  a  very  powerful  form  of 
conscience. 

(3)  A  number  of  primitive  emotions  join  forces  with  them. 
Sympathy  is  generally  on  their  side,  and  the  instinctive  glow 
of  patriotism  or  pride  in  the  tribe's  success.  The  shrinking 
from  disapproval,  the  craving  for  esteem,  the  very  early 
emotions  of  shame  and  vanity,  help  to  pull  away  from  the 
self-indulgent  or  selfish  impulse.  The  spontaneous  admira- 
tion of  others  for  their  virtues  and  anger  at  them  for  their 
sins  is  applied  involuntarily  by  a  man  to  himself;  contempt 
for  his  own  weakness  and  joy  in  his  superiority  according 
to  the  generally  accepted  code  are  powerful  deterrents.  The 
consciousness  of  the  resentment  that  others  will  feel  if  he 
does  evil,  the  instinctive  application  to  himself  of  a  trace 
of  the  resentment  he  would  feel  toward  another  who  should 


INWARD   DEVELOPMENT  —  CONSCIENCE  41 

act  thus  toward  him  or  toward  these  fellow  tribesmen  of  his 
—  such  complex  states  of  mind  complicate  his  mental 
processes  and  help  check  his  primary  instincts. 

(4)  To  these  ingredients  we  must  early  add  the  more  or 
less  conscious  fear  of  the  penalties  of  the  tribal  law,  of  the 
vengeance  of  chiefs  or  powerful  members  of  the  tribe,  of  the 
tribal  gods  and  their  jealous  priests.  These  fears  may  be 
but  dimly  felt  and  not  clearly  discriminated;  but  however 
subconscious  they  may  be  in  a  given  case  of  moral  conflict, 
they  play  a  large  part.  The  peace  of  mind  that  accompanies 
a  sense  of  conformity  to  the  will  of  rulers  or  of  gods,  con- 
trasted with  the  anxiety  that  follows  infraction,  gives  a 
greatly  increased  weight  to  that  growing  pressure  of  counter- 
instincts  which  comes  so  largely  to  override  a  man's  animal 
nature. 

Most  of  the  sources  of  conscience  thus  date  far  back 
beyond  the  dawn  of  history.  But  they  can  be  pretty  safely 
inferred  from  the  earliest  records,  from  a  study  of  existing 
savage  races,  and  from  the  study  of  childhood.  The  definite 
conception  of  "conscience"  is  very  late,  scarcely  appearing 
until  very  modern  times.  And  the  fact  that  conscience 
itself,  even  in  its  rudimentary  forms,  was  much  later  in 
growth  than  the  underlying  animal  instincts  which  it  devel- 
oped to  control  and  guide,  is  shown  by  its  late  development 
in  the  child  —  not,  normally,  until  the  beginning  of  the 
third  year.  The  early  life  of  the  individual  parallels  the 
evolution  of  the  race;  and  the  later-developed  faculties  in 
the  child  are  those  which  arose  in  the  later  stages  of  human 
progress.  But  the  existence  of  our  well-defined  moral  sense, 
with  its  significant  role  in  modern  life,  needs  no  supernatural 
explanation.  It  has  grown  up  and  come  to  be  what  it  is  as 
naturally  as  have  our  language,  our  customs,  and  our 
physical  organs. 


42  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

What  is  conscience  now? 

It  is  a  valuable  exercise  in  introspection  to  observe  a 
case  of  '* conscience"  in  one's  own  life  and  note  of  what 
mental  stuff  it  is  made.  When  a  number  write  down  their 
findings  without  mutual  suggestion,  the  results  are  usually 
widely  divergent.  Any  of  the  original  ingredients  hitherto 
mentioned  may  be  discovered,  or  other  personal  factors. 
There  may  be  present  to  consciousness  only  a  vague  uneasi- 
ness or  restlessness,  or  there  may  be  a  sophisticated  recur- 
rence of  the  concepts  of  "conscience,"  "duty,"  etc.  The 
one  universal  fact  is  that  there  is  a  conflict  between  some 
primitive  impulse  or  passion  and  some  maturer  mental 
checks.  Any  sort  of  mental  stuff  that  serves  the  purpose  of 
controlling  desire  will  do;  we  must  define  conscience  in  terms 
not  of  content  but  of  function.  There  is  no  such  unity  in 
the  material  as  the  single  name  seems  to  imply;  and  whether 
or  not  that  name  shall  be  given  to  a  given  psychological 
state  is  a  matter  of  usage  in  which  there  is  considerable 
variation. 

In  general,  we  reserve  the  name  "conscience"  for  the 
vaguer  and  more  elusive  restraints  and  leadings,  the  sense 
of  reluctant  necessity  whose  purpose  we  do  not  clearly  see 
although  we  feel  its  pressure,  the  accumulated  residuum  of 
long  inner  experience  and  many  influences  from  without. 
Our  minds  retain  many  creases  whose  origin  we  have  for- 
gotten; we  veer  away  from  many  a  pleasant  inclination 
without  knomng  why.  These  unanalyzed  and  residual 
inhibitions  that  grip  us  and  will  not  let  us  go,  form  a  con- 
trasting background  to  our  more  explicit  motives  and  often 
count  for  more  in  our  conduct.  The  very  lack  of  comprehen- 
sion serves  in  less  rational  minds  to  enhance  their  prestige 
with  an  atmosphere  of  awe  and  mystery.  These  strange 
checks  and  promptings  that  well  up  in  a  man's  heart  are 


INWARD  DEVELOPMENT  —  CONSCIENCE  43 

taken  to  be  a  supernatural  guidance  which  he  must  not  dare 
to  disobey. 

The  voice  of  God  in  our  hearts  we  may,  indeed,  well  con- 
ceive them  to  be.  The  attempt  to  analyze  into  its  psycho- 
logical elements  and  trace  the  natural  genesis  of  conscience, 
as  of  moraUty  in  general,  must  not  be  taken  as  an  attempt 
to  discredit  it  or  to  read  God  out  of  the  world.  For  God 
works  usuall}^  if  not  universally,  through  natural  laws;  and 
the  historical  viewpoint,  that  sees  everything  in  our  devel- 
oped life  as  the  outcome  of  ages  of  natural  evolution,  is  not 
only  rich  in  fruitful  insight,  but  entirely  consistent  with  a 
deep  religious  feeling.  For  hortatory  or  inspirational  pur- 
poses ^ve  do  not  need  to  make  this  analysis;  it  has,  indeed, 
its  practical  dangers.  It  tends  to  rob  the  glory  from  any- 
thing to  analyze  it  into  its  parts  and  study  the  natural 
causes  that  produced  it.  The  loveliest  painting  is  but  a  mess 
cf  pigments  to  the  microscope,  the  loveliest  face  but  a  mess 
of  cells  and  hairs  and  blood-vessels.  There  is  something 
gruesome  and  inhuman  about  embryology  and  all  other 
studies  of  origins.  While  we  are  analyzing  an  object,  or 
tracing  its  genesis,  we  are  not  responding  to  it  as  a  whole  or 
feeling  its  beauty  and  power.  The  mystery,  the  spell,  van- 
ishes; we  cease  to  thrill  when  we  dissect. 

But  know^ledge  proceeds  by  analysis,  and  gains  by  a  study 
of  origins  and  causes.  And  the  temporary  emotional  loss 
should  be  more  than  balanced  by  the  value  of  the  insight 
won.  We  need  not  linger  too  long  at  our  dissecting.  The 
discovery  that  conscience  is  an  explicable  and  natural 
development  does  not  preclude  a  realization  of  the  awfulness 
of  obligation,  the  sacredness  of  duty,  any  more  than  a 
geologist  must  cease  to  thrill  at  the  grandeur  and  beauty  of 
the  Grand  Canon  because  he  has  studied  the  composition 
of  the  rocks  and  understands  the  causes  that  have  slowly, 
through  the  ages,  wrought  this  miracle.   So  we  need  feel  no 


44  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

reluctance  in  admitting  that  the  sense  of  duty  is  not  some- 
thing imposed  upon  human  nature  from  without;  it  is  of  its 
very  substance,  it  has  developed  step  by  step  with  our  other 
faculties,  slowly  crystallizing  through  millenniums  of  human 
and  pre-human  experience. 

In  the  abstract,  then,  we  may  say  that  conscience  is  a 
name  for  any  secondary  impulses  or  inhibitions  which  check 
and  redirect  man's  primary  impulses^  for  a  greater  good;  any 
later  developed  aversions  or  inclinations,  judgments  of  value 
or  feelings  of  constraint,  which  guide  a  man  in  the  teeth  of 
his  animal  nature  toward  a  better  way  of  life  —  provided 
that  these  superimposed  impulses  are  not  explicit  enough  to  be 
classified  under  some  other  head.  For  example,  we  may  be 
pulled  up  sharply  from  a  course  of  self-indulgence  by  a 
conscious  realization  of  the  harm  we  are  doing  to  others 
thereby;  this  bridling  state  of  mind,  whether  chiefly  emo- 
tional or  more  intellectual,  we  may  call  sympathy,  or  an 
altruistic  instinct,  or  love.  But  when  we  feel  the  pressure 
from  these  same  mental  states  incipiently  aroused,  when  our 
motor-mechanism  half-automatically  steers  us  away  from 
the  selfish  act,  without  our  consciously  formulating  a 
specific  name  for  the  new  impulse  or  recognizing  any 
articulate  motive,  we  are  apt  to  give  this  mental  push  the 
more  general  name  of  conscience.  So  if  we  consciously  reckon 
up,  balance  advantages,  and  decide  on  the  less  inviting  act 
in  recognition  of  its  really  greater  worth  to  us,  we  say  we 
act  from  prudence  or  insight,  we  are  reasonable  about  it; 
while  if  the  grumblings  of  the  prudential  motives  remain 
subterranean,  subconscious,  they  play  the  role  of  conscience. 
Conscience  is,  on  such  occasions,  but  inarticulate  common 
sense.  Usually,  however,  prudential  and  altruistic  motives 
would  both  be  discovered  if  the  dumb  driving  of  conscience 
were  to  be  made  articulate.  The  reverberation  of  parental 
teachings,  of  sermons  heard  and  books  read,  of  the  opinions 


INWARD   DE^TLOPMENT  —  CONSCIENCE  45 

and  emotions  of  our  fellows,  might  be  found,  all  blent  and 
fused  into  a  combined  *' suggestion,"  a  mental  push,  a 
*'must"  or  '*  ought,"  from  whose  influence  we  find  it  difficult 
to  escape. 

The  detailed  psychological  analysis  of  cases  of  conscience 
^and  the  study  of  its  genesis  are  of  no  essential  ethical  inter- 
est, except  as  they  show  us  that  the  sense  of  duty  is  not  an 
ultimate,  irreducible  element  in  our  consciousness,  or  make 
clearer  to  us  its  function  and  value.  Conscience  is  the  general 
name  for  coercion  upon  conduct  from  within  the  mind.  The 
important  thing  to  note  is  the  useful  purpose  which,  in  its 
so  widely  varying  forms,  it  serves.  Whatever  its  sources  or 
its  exact  nature  in  contemporary  man,  it  is  one  of  the  most 
valuable  of  our  assets.  To  a  more  explicit  statement  of  its 
value  we  must  now  turn. 

What  is  the  value  of  conscience? 

It  would  seem,  at  first  glance,  as  if  the  development  of 
reason  should  make  conscience  unnecessary.  When  we  are 
able  to  discern  the  consequences  of  our  acts,  formulate  and 
weigh  our  motives  and  aims,  what  need  of  these  vague  pre- 
rational  promptings  and  inhibitions?  Why  not  train  men  to 
supplant  a  blind  sense  of  duty  by  a  conscious  insight,  a 
rational  valuation  of  ends  and  means?  Is  not  reason,  as  it 
has  been  recently  called,  "the  ultimate  conscience"?  ^ 

(1)  Conscience  is  valuable  on  account  of  our  ignorance* 
Individually  we  have  not  had  experience  enough  to  guide  us 
in  our  crises;  conscience  is  the  representative  in  us  of  the 
wisdom  of  the  race.  In  many  cases  we  should  never  reason 
out  the  right  solution  of  a  problem;  we  lack  the  data.  But 

*  G.  Santayana,  Reason  in  Science,  p.  232;  where  also  the  following:  "So 
soon  as  conscience  summons  its  own  dicta  for  revision  in  the  light  of  experi- 
ence and  of  universal  sympathy,  it  is  no  longer  called  conscience,  but 
reason." 


46  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

we  can  lean  upon  the  racial  experience.  Many  past  experi' 
ences,  now  forgotten,  have  gone  to  the  moulding  of  this 
faculty.  The  need  of  action  is  often  imminent,  there  is  no 
time  for  the  long  study  of  the  situation  which  alone  could 
form  a  sure  insight  into  the  conduct  it  demands.  We  need 
readymade  morals.  Moreover,  we  are  subject  to  bias,  to 
individual  one-sidedness,  and  to  the  distortion  of  passion; 
in  the  stress  of  temptation  we  are  not  in  a  mood  to  reason 
judicially,  even  if  we  have  the  necessary  data.  Altogether, 
insight,  though  in  the  long  run  the  critic  of  conscience,  is 
not  a  practical  substitute.  What  conscience  tells  us  is  more 
apt  to  be  true  than  what  at  the  moment  seems  a  rational 
judgment. 

(2)  Conscience  is  also  valuable  in  view  of  our  rebellious- 
ness. Conventional  morality  is  external,  and  would  continu- 
ally arouse  revolt,  were  it  not  reinforced  by  an  inward 
prompting.    If  external  motives  and  penalties  alone  bore 
upon  us  we  should  chafe  under  them,  and  under  the  stress 
of  passion  or  longing  throw  them  aside.  Even  if  these  exter- 
nal sanctions  were  reinforced  by  insight  into  the  rationality 
of  morality,  that  insight  might  still  leave  us  rebellious  and 
unpersuaded.    Knowledge  alone  is  feeble,  marginal  in  our 
lives.    We  often  sin  in  the  full  knowledge  of  the  penalties 
awaiting  us.    We  need  something  more  dynamic,  pressure 
as  well  as  information.    Conscience  is  such  a  driver.    Its 
commands  weigh  upon  us,  and  will  not  be  stilled.   Reason 
plays  but  a  weak  part  in  the  best  of  us;  and  to  counteract 
our  incurable  waywardness,  our  recurrent  longings  for  what 
cannot  be  had  without  too  great  a  cost,  we  need  not  only 
the  presence  of  law  and  convention,  not  only  the  weak  voice 
of  knowledge,  but  the  stern  summons  of  this  powerful  psy- 
chological response.    Nature  was  wise  when  she  evolved 
this  function  as  a  bulwark  against  our  weakness,  a  bit 
between  our  teeth. 


INWARD  DEVELOPMENT  — CONSCIENCE  47 

(3)  We  also  need  conscience  because  of  our  forgetful ness- 
Over  and  over  again  we  say,  "  I  did  n't  stop  to  think."  If  our 
conscience  had  been  properly  acute,  it  would  have  made  us 
stop.  Insight,  however  comprehensive  and  clear,  is  apt  to 
remain  somewhere  in  a  locked  drawer  in  our  minds  when  the 
hot-blooded  impulse  appears.  If  we  were  but  to  pause  and 
reflect,  we  should  be  sensible  and  kind.  But  our  intellect  is 
dulled  by  our  emotions,  it  does  not  get  working.  We  need  a 
more  instinctive,  a  deeper-rooted  mechanism,  an  imperious 
"Halt!"  at  the  brief  moment  between  the  thought  of  sin 
and  the  act.  Conscience  is  not  only  a  teacher  and  a  driver, 
it  is  a  sentinel.  Its  red  flag  stops  us  at  the  brink  of  many  a 
disaster,  and  we  have  it  to  thank  for  many  an  otherwise 
forgotten  duty  performed. 

To  sum  up:  Instinct  and  desire  are  lacking  in  proper 
adjustment  to  the  needs  of  life.  Society  seeks  to  control 
them  by  the  pressure  of  law  and  custom.  These  powerful 
forces,  however,  are  external,  and,  savoring  more  or  less  of 
tyranny,  tend  at  times  to  awaken  a  rebellious  spirit  in  the 
hot-headed.  So  a  perpetual  antinomy  would  exist  between 
internal  impulse  and  external  constraint,  were  it  not  that 
that  external  constraint  is  reflected  within  the  individual 
mind  by  a  secondary  and  overlying  set  of  inhibitions  and 
promptings  which  we  call  variously  the  "moral  sense,"  the 
"sense  of  duty,"  or  "conscience."  We  often  do  not  know  or 
remember  consciously  at  the  moment  of  decision  what  the 
law  ordains  or  the  wisdom  of  the  race  teaches.  But  we  have 
an  inward  monitor.  We  often  hang  back  from  a  recognized 
duty.  But  we  feel  an  inward  push.  When  the  WTong  impulse 
is  pungent  and  enticing,  and  the  right  one  insipid  and  tame, 
when  we  would  forget  if  we  could  the  perils  of  sin,  conscience 
surges  up  in  us  and  saves  us  from  ourselves.  It  is  a  mechan- 
ism of  extreme  value  which  nature  has  evolved  in  us  for 


48  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

imposing  on  our  weak  and  vacillating  wills  action  that  make? 
for  a  truer  good  than  we  should  otherwise  choose. 

No  wonder,  then,  if  we  reverence  this  saving  power  within 
us,  and  crown  it  with  a  halo  as  the  divine  spark  in  the  midst 
of  our  grosser  nature.  The  more  we  revere  it,  the  brighter 
the  glamour  it  has  for  us,  the  stronger  it  grows  and  the  more 
it  helps  us.  The  apotheosis  of  conscience  has  been  of  immense 
use  in  leading  men  to  heed  its  voice  and  obey  its  leading. 
Yet  this  blind  allegiance  has  its  dangers;  conscience  has 
often  been  a  cruel  tyrant.  It  is  by  no  means  an  always  safe 
guide,  as  we  shall  presently  note.  And  as  men  grow  more  and 
more  adjusted  by  instinct  and  training  to  their  real  needs, 
they  will  have  less  and  less  need  of  this  helmsman.  After 
all,  there  is  something  wrong  with  a  life  that  needs  conscience ; 
it  is  a  transition-help  for  the  long  period  of  man's  maladjust- 
ment. Spencer  looks  forward,  a  little  too  hopefully,  perhaps, 
to  a  time  in  the  measurable  future  when  we  shall  have  out- 
grown the  need  of  it,  when  we  shall  wish  to  do  right  and  need 
no  compulsion,  outer  or  inner.  And  Emerson,  in  a  well- 
known  passage,  writes :  *'  We  love  characters  in  proportion 
as  they  are  impulsive  and  spontaneous.  When  we  see  a  soul 
whose  acts  are  all  regal,  graceful,  and  pleasant  as  roses,  we 
must  thank  God  that  such  things  can  be  and  are,  and  not 
turn  sourly  on  the  angel  and  say,  *  Crump  is  a  better  man 
with  his  grunting  resistance  to  all  his  native  devils."*  A 
Chinese  proverb  says,  "He  who  finds  pleasure  in  vice  and 
pain  in  virtue  is  still  a  novice  in  both."  The  saint  is  he  who 
has  learned  really  to  love  virtue,  in  its  concrete  duties, 
better  than  all  the  allurements  of  sin;  to  him  we  may  say,  as 
Virgil  said  to  Dante,  "Take  thine  own  pleasure  for  thy  guide 
henceforth.'*  But  until  we  are  saints  it  is  wise  for  us  to 
cultivate  conscientiousness,  the  habit  of  obedience,  even 
when  it  costs,  to  that  inward  urging  which  is,  on  the  whole, 
for  most  of  us,  our  safest  guide. 


INWARD   DEVELOPMENT  — CONSCIENCE  49 

F.  Paulsen,  System  of  Ethics,  bk.  n,  chap,  v,  sees.  1,  2,  5.  H. 
Spencer,  Data  oj  Ethics,  cha.^.  vii,  sees.  44-46.  S.  E.  Mezes,  Ethics, 
Descriptive  and  Explanatory,  chaps,  v,  viii.  Sutherland,  op.  cit., 
chap.  XV.  F.  Tliilly,  Introduction  to  Ethics,  chap.  in.  Westermarck, 
op.  cit.,  chap.  V.  Darwin,  Descent  oj  Man,  pt.  i,  chap.  ni.  J.  H. 
Hyslop,  Elements  of  Ethics,  chaps,  vi,  vn.  J.  S.  Mill,  Utilitarianism, 
chap.  V.  H.  W.  Wright,  Self -Realization,  pt.  i,  chap.  iv.  H.  Rash- 
dall,  75  Conscience  an  Emotion?  chap.  i.  Studies  in  Philosophy  and 
Psychology  (Garman  memorial  volume),  chap.  iv.  J,  H.  Lcuba,  in 
American  Journal  of  Psycliology,  vol.  8,  p.  528. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  INDIVIDUALIZING  OF  CONSCIENCE 

Conscience,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  result  of  a  fusion  of 
elements  coming  from  personal  experience  and  tribal  judg- 
ment. In  its  early  phases  the  latter  elements  predominate; 
conscience  may  be  fairly  called  the  inner  side  of  custom. 
Primitive  men  have  little  individuality  and  involuntarily 
reflect  the  general  attitude.  But  with  widening  experience 
and  growing  mental  maturity,  conscience,  like  man's  other 
faculties,  tends  to  become  more  individual  and  divergent, 
until  we  find,  in  civilized  life,  a  man  standing  out  for  con- 
science' sake  against  the  opinion  of  the  world.  The  individ- 
ualization of  conscience,  with  the  consequent  clash  of  ideals, 
gives  the  study  of  moraUty  much  of  its  interest  and  diflSculty ; 
it  will  be  worth  while  to  note  some  of  its  causes. 

Why  did  not  the  individxializing  of  conscience  occur  earlier? 

(1)  In  primitive  man  there  is  not  much  opportunity  for 
the  development  of  individuality.  There  are  few  personal 
possessions,  there  is  little  scope  for  the  exercise  of  peculiar 
talents,  there  is  little  power  of  reflection,  to  develop  strongly 
individual  ideas.  The  self-assertive  instincts  are  to  consider- 
able extent  still  dormant  for  lack  of  stimulus  to  call  them 
forth.  The  individual  is  content  to  take  his  place  in  the 
group-life,  and  it  seldom  occurs  to  him  to  question  the 
group-judgment. 

(2)  In  primitive  life  there  is  a  drastic  repression  of  any 
incipient  rebelliousness,  through  the  enforcement  of  custom 
or  explicit  law  in  the  ways  we  have  indicated;  the  fear  of 


THE  INDIVIDUALIZING  OF  CONSCIENCE  51 

sumraary  retribution  must  have  been  a  heavy  dLscourage- 
ment  to  any  innovator.  If  men  dared  to  defy  the  community 
morals,  they  were  very  Hkely  to  be  put  to  death  before 
the  habit  of  free  judgment  had  much  time  to  spread.  There 
was  thus  a  sort  of  artificial  selection  for  survival  of  the  con- 
ventional type,  and  weeding-out  of  the  free  thinker  and 
moral  genius.  Even  in  historic  times  this  process  has 
continued  and  been  an  enormous  clog  on  human  progress. 
The  man  of  revolutionary  moral  insight  has  had  to  pay  the 
penalty,  if  not  of  death  —  as  in  the  case  of  Socrates  or  of 
Jesus  —  at  least  of  ridicule  and  ostracism,  of  excommunica- 
tion and  isolation  —  as,  in  our  own  day,  with  Tolstoy. 
Many  and  many  a  saint  who  might  have  been  a  beacon- 
light  to  mankind  has  hved  under  the  curses  or  sneers  of  his 
fellows  and  died  in  loneliness,  to  be  soon  forgotten.  A  few 
have,  after  years  of  o|>position,  obtained  a  following  and 
accompUshed  great  reforms,  as  did  Buddha,  Mohammed, 
St.  Francis,  and  Luther.  But  none  can  count  the  potential 
reformers,  the  men  of  new  insight,  of  individual  moral  judg- 
ment, who  have  been  crushed  by  the  weight  of  group-opposi- 
tion.   Man  has  been  the  worst  enemy  of  his  own  progress. 

(3)  There  is  another  aspect  to  this  selective  process, 
noted  before  in  another  context  —  the  struggle  for  existence 
between  groups.  So  intense  are  these  tribal  struggles  in 
early  society  that  harmony  within  a  group  is  absolutely 
necessary.  Individualization  means  disorganization;  and 
whatever  commimities  developed  free  thought  and  diver- 
gent ideas  were  at  a  disadvantage  when  it  came  to  action. 
Many  such  groups,  ahead  of  their  rivals  in  individual  moral 
development,  were  wiped  out  by  barbaric  armies  that  gave 
unquestioning  obedience  to  the  tribal  will  and  worked 
together  like  a  machine.  Up  to  a  certain  stage  in  human 
development  individuahty  was  an  undesirable  variation 
and  was  ruthlessly  repressed,  sometimes  by  the  execution 


52  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

of  the  particular  offenders,  sometimes  by  the  destruction  of 
the  group  to  which  they  belonged  and  which  they  by  their 
divergence  weakened. 

What  forces  made  against  custom-morality? 

Against  these  repressive  forces,  however,  other  forces 
■were  from  early  times  urging  men  on  to  reject  the  tyranny 
of  custom.  Those  inward  promptings  that  we  call  conscience 
were  continually  tending  to  become  less  the  echo  of  the 
group-conventions  and  more  the  expression  of  the  individ- 
ual's needs  and  deepest  desires. 

(1)  At  bottom,  of  course,  lay  the  natural  restlessness  and 
passions  of  men,  the  impatience  of  control,  the  longing  for 
liberty,  the  craving  for  self-expression.  The  combative 
instinct,  pride,  obstinacy,  and  notably  the  sex-instinct,  were 
from  earliest  times  spurring  men  on  to  a  disregard  of  the 
conventional  and  the  formation  of  individual  standards. 

(2)  We  may  make  special  mention  of  the  love  of  power 
over  others,  which  has  been  one  of  the  deep  roots  of  the 
perpetual  internecine  struggles  of  man.  There  is  a  need  of 
leadership  in  every  group;  and  this  need  is  felt  more  and 
more  keenly  as  the  groups  increase  in  size.  At  first  the 
authority  of  the  elders  suflBces,  or  of  strong  men  who  push 
to  the  fore  at  times  of  crisis,  as  in  the  case  of  the  so-called 
judges,  the  military  dictators,  as  we  might  better  call  them, 
of  early  Israel.  But  as  Israel,  grown  in  numbers,  and  feeling 
the  need  of  greater  unity  and  readiness,  clamored  for  a  king, 
so  generally,  at  a  certain  stage  of  culture,  permanent  chiefs 
of  some  sort  become  necessary.  Now  the  chief,  enjoying  his 
sense  of  power,  usually  imposed  his  will  upon  the  people: 
his  individuality,  at  least,  had  more  or  less  free  play.  And 
thus,  through  the  changing  decrees  of  successive  rulers,  all 
sorts  of  varying  standards  became  realized,  and  the  rigidity 
of  early  custom  was  steadily  loosened. 


THE  INDIVIDUALIZING  OF  CONSCIENCE  6S 

(3)  In  the  hunting  stage  of  primitive  life,  and  even  in  th6 
pastoral  stage,  there  was  little  private  property,  and  hence 
little  opportunity  for  the  development  of  the  acquisitive 
instinct.  But  with  the  transition  to  an  agricultural  life,  and 
still  more  with  the  growth  of  commerce  and  the  arts,  private 
accumulation  became  possible.  Individual  initiative  began 
to  pay;  the  smarter  and  more  ingenious  could  outstrip  their 
fellows  by  breaking  through  the  crust  of  custom,  while 
those  who  were  hidebound  by  a  conventional  conscience 
were  at  a  disadvantage.  To  a  large  extent  this  lawlessness  or 
innovation  in  conduct  came  into  conflict  with  the  individ- 
ual's conscience.  But  the  question  "Why  not.'^"  would  at 
once  arise;  if  possible,  a  man  would  justify  his  act  to  himself. 
And  to  some  degree  those  new  w^ays  of  acting  would  swing 
conscience  over  to  their  side. 

(4)  In  earliest  times  each  tribe  lived  very  much  to  itself 
and  developed  its  own.  morals,  under  the  stress  of  similar 
forces,  but  without  much  influence  from  the  experience  of 
other  groups.  It  was  thus  exceedingly  difficult  for  it  to 
conceive  of  any  other  ways  of  doing  things;  the  ancestral 
customs  were  accepted  as  inevitable,  like  the  sun  and  the 
rain.  Inter-tribal  conflicts  first  gave,  perhaps,  a  vantage- 
point  for  mutual  criticism.  A  clan  that  by  some  custom  had 
an  obvious  advantage  over  its  neighbors  would  naturally 
be  imitated  as  soon  as  men  became  quick-w^itted  enough  to 
understand  its  superiority.  The  taking  of  prisoners,  the 
exchange  of  hostages  or  envoys,  friendly  missions  and 
journeys,  would  give  insight  into  one  another's  life.  With 
the  development  of  commerce,  this  mutual  criticism  of 
morals  would  be  greatly  accelerated.  So  the  authority  of 
local  conventions  and  standards  would  be  discredited,  cus- 
tom would  become  more  fluid,  and  individual  judgment  find 
freer  play.  Especially  would  the  more  observant,  the  more 
traveled,  the  more  reflective,  tend  to  vary  from  the  ideals 
of  their  neighbors. 


54  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

(5)  In  various  other  ways,  apart  from  the  mutual  influ- 
ence of  divergent  group-customs,  the  progress  of  civilization 
tends  to  produce  variations  in  ideals.  The  increase  of  knowl- 
edge, the  development  of  science  and  philosophy,  bring 
floods  of  new  ideas  to  burst  the  old  dams;  deepening  insight 
reveals  the  irrationality  of  old  ideas  to  the  leaders  of 
thought.  The  progress  of  the  arts  gives  new  interests  and 
valuations.  The  spiritual  seers  and  prophets  see  visions  of  a 
better  order  and  proclaim  new  gospels.  The  development  of 
classes  and  castes  allows  to  the  aristocracy  more  leisure  to 
think  and  criticize;  the  institution  of  slavery,  in  particular, 
produced  a  class  of  slave-owners  with  ample  time  to  dissect 
their  inherited  conceptions. 

(6)  Finally,  where,  under  favoring  conditions,  the  danger 
of  war  in  which  man  has  for  the  most  part  lived  became  less 
acute,  custom  generally  grew  laxer.  It  is  the  imperious 
necessity  of  self-preservation  that  has  been  the  greatest 
conservative  force;  warlike  states  have  demanded  strict 
allegiance  and  looked  with  suspicion  upon  deviations  from 
the  group  ideals.  But  peoples  that,  whether  from  a  fortunate 
geographical  situation  or  because  of  their  marked  superiority 
in  numbers  and  power  over  their  neighbors,  have  escaped 
this  need  of  perpetual  self-defense,  could  afford  to  relax 
their  vigilance  for  conformity.  And  the  very  notable  increase 
in  individual  variations  in  conduct  and  ideal  during  the  past 
century  has  been  largely  owing  to  the  era  of  comparative 
peace.  We  seem  to  be  reaching  the  age  when  the  advantage 
is  to  lie  not  with  the  nation  that  has  the  most  rigid  customs, 
but  with  the  nation  that  shows  the  most  individual  initiative 
and  progress. 

Conservatism  vs.  radicalism 

We  have  become  forever  emancipated  from  the  tyranny 
of  custom-morality  under  which  the  majority  of  men  have 


THE  INDIVIDUALIZING  OF  CONSCIENCE  55 

lived.  Legislation  is,  to  be  sure,  continually  on  the  increase, 
shutting  men  out  from  the  ever  new  ways  they  discover  to 
prey  upon  their  fellows.  But  nevertheless,  the  freedom  with 
which  men  may  now  live  their  owti  lives  according  to  their 
ovm.  ideas  is  almost  a  new  phenomenon  upon  the  earth. 
When  we  compare  the  free  range  that  our  individuality  has 
with  the  tyranny  of  public  opinion  even  so  recently  as  the 
lifetime  of  our  Puritan  grandparents,  when  we  see  the  new 
experiments  in  personal  life  and  social  legislation  which  are 
being  tried  on  every  hand,  when  we  read  a  few  of  the  thou- 
sands of  books  and  magazines  and  newspapers  that  are 
pouring  a  continual  flood  of  new  ideas  into  the  world,  we 
must  realize  the  immense  change  from  the  stereotyped  cus- 
toms of  nearly  all  past  epochs.  In  each  of  our  forty-eight 
States  different  codes  are  showing  their  relative  advantages; 
here  woman's  suffrage  is  on  trial,  there  the  initiative  and 
referendum,  there  the  recall.  Almost  every  sort  of  possible 
marriage  law,  it  would  seem,  is  being  tried  somewhere.  It 
is  a  time  of  moral  confusion,  of  the  unsettling  of  old  con- 
ceptions and  a  groping,  stumbling  progress  toward  the 
new. 

In  such  a  situation  it  is  no  wonder  that  we  have  two  types 
of  thought,  two  sets  of  forces,  at  work.  On  the  one  hand  we 
have  the  conservatives,  the  "stand-patters,"  the  maintain- 
ers  of  the  existing  order;  on  the  other  hand  are  the  progres- 
sives, the  radicals,  the  reformers  of  the  existing  order.  For 
the  former  the  moral  standards  of  their  particular  age  and 
country  tend  to  have  an  absolute  and  unconditional  worth, 
which  must  not  be  criticized  or  questioned.  The  necessity 
of  allegiance  to  morality  has  been  so  deeply  stamped  upon 
their  minds  that  it  has  become  a  loyalty  to  the  particular 
brand  of  morality  they  have  grown  up  in,  however  fla- 
grantly inadequate  or  tyrannous  it  may  be.  For  the  latter 
a  commendable  impatience  with  the  imperfect  is  apt  to 


56  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

foster  a  blindness  to  the  value  that  almost  always  lies  in 
ancient  customs  and  a  lack  of  regard  for  the  need  of  stability 
and  common  agreement  on  some  plane.  These  iconoclasts, 
vociferous  in  condemnation,  are  often  most  empty-handed, 
giving  us  nothing  wiser  or  more  advantageous  wherewith  to 
replace  the  conventions  they  discard.  So  it  is  difficult  to 
say  whether  humanity  is  more  in  danger  from  the  red- 
handed  radicalism  which  destroys  the  precious  fruit  of  long 
experience,  or  from  the  obstinate  obstructionists  who  by  the 
dead  weight  of  their  apathy  or  the  positive  pull-back  of 
their  antagonism  delay  the  remedying  of  existing  evils.  The 
ideal  lies  in  keeping  morality  plastic  while  giving  its  approved 
forms  our  hearty  allegiance.  Widely  different  ideals  are 
theoretically  conceivable;  but  we  live  in  a  specific  time  and 
place  and  must  defer  to  the  code  of  our  fellows;  it  is  along 
these  lines,  and  by  gradual  steps,  that  progress  must  be 
made.  We  must  be  on  the  alert  for  new  suggestions,  but 
slow  to  tear  down  till  we  can  build  better.  The  greatest  of 
prophets,  keenly  as  he  saw  the  flaws  in  existing  standards, 
proclaimed  that  he  came  not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfill. 

It  is  evident  enough  to  the  impartial  observer  that  our 
present  chaos  and  mutual  antagonism  of  conflicting  view- 
points is  not  ideal;  we  need  to  work  out  of  this  disorder  into 
some  sane  and  stable  order;  when  we  can  find  the  best  way 
of  life  we  must  discard  these  manifold  variations,  most  of 
which  are  foohsh  and  ill-advised.  The  undesirability  of  this 
contemporary  disagreement,  which  in  some  matters  amounts 
to  almost  a  complete  moral  anarchy,  is  enough  to  explain 
the  pull-back  of  the  conservatives.  And  it  is  precisely  the 
purpose  of  such  a  volume  as  this  to  help  in  the  crystallizing 
of  definite  and  universally  accepted  moral  principles  for 
personal  and  social  life.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  this  tem- 
porary chaos  is  more  pregnant  with  promise  than  the  older 
blind  acquiescence  in  existing  codes.    We  must  bring  the 


THE  INDIVIDUALIZING  OF  CONSCIENCE  57 

full  light  of  criticism  and  experiment  to  bear  upon  the  laws 

and  customs  of  the  past. 

"New  occasions  teach  new  duties. 
Time  makes  ancient  good  uncouth." 

We  should  reverence  the  great  seers  and  lawmakers  of  the 
past;  but  their  true  disciples  are  not  those  who  slavishly 
accept  their  dicta,  they  are  rather  those  who  think  for  them- 
selves, as  they  did,  and  contribute,  as  they  did,  toward  the 
slow  progress  of  man. 

What  are  the  dangers  of  conventional  morality? 

The  reasons  why  we  cannot  be  content  with  our  fathers' 
conservatism  in  morals,  and  our  fathers'  custom-bound 
conscience,  may  be  summarized  as  follows :  — 

(1)  Conventional  morality  is  almost  necessarily  too  gen- 
eral; it  is  not  elastic  enough  to  fit  the  infinite  variations  in 
specific  cases,  not  detailed  enough  to  fit  all  needs.  It  there- 
fore often  causes  needless  and  cruel  repression;  the  most 
sensitive  and  aspiring  spirits  have  often  revolted  from  the 
morality  of  their  times  because  of  its  harshness.  It  is  well 
for  the  marriage-tie  to  be  binding;  divorce  has  generally 
been  deemed  unchristian.  But  if  this  judgment  is  rigidly 
enforced,  special  cases  arise,  very  piteous,  very  pathetic, 
crying  out  for  a  more  discriminating  rule.  Our  forebears, 
with  their  grave  realization  of  the  dangers  of  frivolousness, 
forbade  by  law  and  a  stern  public  opinion  many  innocent 
and  wholesome  diversions.  Such  injustices  are  inevitable 
where  custom  has  unchecked  sway.  The  general  aim  and 
result  may  be  very  salutary,  but  the  application  is  too 
sweeping,  and  brings  suffering  to  many  unfortunate  individ- 
uals, or  to  the  community  as  a  whole,  by  its  indiscrimination. 

(2)  But  even  in  its  general  result  custom  may  be  harmful. 
Morals  have  developed  blindly,  as  we  have  seen,  through  all 
sorts  of  irrational  inliueuces,  swayed  this  way  by  class- 


58  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

interest,  by  rulers  or  priests,  veered  that  way  by  supersti- 
tion, passion,  and  stupidity.  Morality  has  not  understood 
itself;  and  the  natural  forces  which  have  developed  it  into 
its  enormous  usefulness  have  not  always  weeded  out  the 
baneful  elements.  The  persecution  of  heretics  was  sheer 
mistake,  but  it  was  acceded  to  by  practically  the  entire 
Church  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  practised  with  utter  con- 
scientiousness. The  hostility  of  the  Puritans  to  music  and  art 
was  pure  folly,  though  it  seemed  to  them  their  grim  duty. 

(3)  New  situations  are  continually  arising,  new  sins 
appearing.  Conventional  morality,  while  sometimes  over- 
severe  against  old  and  well-recognized  sins,  lags  far  behind 
in  its  branding  of  the  newer  forms.  The  evils  arising  from 
the  modern  congestion  of  population,  the  unscrupulousness 
of  modern  business,  the  selfishness  of  politicians,  the  serv- 
ility of  newspapers  to  the  "interests"  and  to  advertisers, 
for  example,  find  too  little  reprobation  in  our  established 
moral  codes.  "Business  is  business"  has  been  said  by 
respectable  church-members.  A  successful  American  boss, 
when  asked  if  he  was  not  in  politics  for  his  pocketbook,  said, 
"Of  course!  Aren't  you.^*"  with  no  sense  of  shame.  Prob- 
ably he  was  very  "moral"  along  the  old  lines  —  an  excel- 
lent father,  a  kind  husband,  an  agreeable  neighbor;  but  his 
conventional  code,  shared  by  most  of  his  contemporaries, 
did  not  include  the  reprobation  of  the  practice  of  politics  for 
private  gain.  In  the  upper  classes  are  many  people  who  are 
"good"  by  the  old  standards,  but  who  are  unhelpful  and 
trivial-minded,  mere  parasites  devoted  to  sport  or  society, 
with  never  a  qualm  of  conscience  for  their  selfishness.  The 
old  standards  need  the  constant  infusion  of  new  blood;  our 
consciences  need  to  be  adjusted  to  our  new  relations  and 
deeper  insight.^ 

*  Cf.  Ross,  Sin  and  Society,  p.  14:  "One  might  suppose  that  an  exas- 
perated public  would  sternly  castigate  these  modern  sins.  But  the  fact  is. 


THE  INDIVIDUALIZING  OF  CONSCIENCE  59 

(4)  Custom-morality  tends  to  literalism,  a  mere  formal 
observance  of  law  or  custom  without  the  true  spirit  of 
service,  without  any  inward  sweetness  or  power.  Christ's 
condemnation  of  the  Pharisees  will  occur  to  every  one;  the 
parable  of  the  Pharisee  and  publican,  and  that  of  the  widow's 
mite,  among  others,  are  classic  illustrations  of  a  cut-and- 
dried  formalism  in  moraUty.  Such  a  legalism  Paul  found 
could  not  save  him.  And  forever  the  prophets  and  spiritual 
leaders  of  men  have  had  to  burst  the  bonds  of  tradition  to 
awaken  a  real  love  of  and  devotion  to  the  good.  The  letter 
killeth,  and  a  punctilious  observance  ^f  rules  may  choke 
out  the  aspirations  of  the  soul. 

(5)  Finally,  conflicts  between  customs  inevitably  arise. 
Which  shall  a  man  obey?  The  moral  perplexity  thus  caused 
gives  a  great  deal  of  its  poignancy  to  the  tragedy  of  life. 
When  one  accepted  ideal  pulls  us  one  way,  and  another 
standard,  to  which  we  have  given  allegiance,  calls  us  the 
other,  when  we  cry  out  with  Desdemona,  "I  do  perceive 
here  a  divided  duty,"  the  only  solution  lies  in  the  develop- 
ment of  insight  and  a  recognition  of  the  transition-nature 
of  much  of  our  accepted  code.  If  for  no  other  reason,  to 
avoid  these  conflicts  of  ideals  we  must  comprehend  the 
ultimate  aims  of  morahty  and  take  existing  standards  with 
a  sort  of  tentative  allegiance. 

It  should  be  clear,  then,  that  the  individualizing  of  con- 
science, which  has  been  going  on  observably  in  recent  times, 
is,  in  spite  of  its  dangers,  a  necessary  and  desirable  process. 

the  very'  qualities  that  lull  the  conscience  of  the  sinner  blind  the  eyes  of  the 
onlookers.  People  are  sentimental^  and  bastinado  wTongdoing  not  accord- 
ing to  its  harmfulness,  but  according  to  the  infamy  that  has  come  to  attach 
to  it.  Undiscerning,  they  chastise  with  scorpions  the  old  authentic  sins, 
but  spare  the  new.  They  do  not  sec  that  .  .  .  blackmail  is  piracy,  that 
embezzlement  is  theft,  that  speculation  is  gambling  .  .  .  that  deleterious 
adulteration  is  murder.  .  .  .  The  cloven  hoof  hides  in  pat<mt  leather;  and  to- 
day, as  in  Hosea's  time,  the  people '  are  destroyed  for  lack  of  knowledge.' ' ' 


60  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics^  chaps,  v,  ix.  W.  Bagehot,  Physics  and 
Politics,  chaps,  ii,  vi.  F.  Paulsen,  System  of  Ethics,  pt.  ii,  chap,  v, 
sec.  G.  S.  E.  Mezes,  Ethics,  chap,  vin,  pp.  164-83.  J.  H.  Coffin, 
The  Socialized  Conscience,  pp.  12-23.  K.  B.  Perry,  The  Moral 
Econoviy,  chap.  iv.  W.  Lippmann,  A  Preface  to  Politics,  chap.  ii. 
F.  M.  McMurry,  How  to  Study,  chap.  ix.  E.  J.  Swift,  Learning  and 
Doing,  chap.  vi.    Boris  Sidis,  Philistine  and  Genius. 


CHAPTER  VI 

CAN  WE  BASE  MORALITY  UPON  CONSCIENCE? 

What  is  the  meaning  of  "moral  intuitionism "  ? 

With  the  growth  of  individuaHsm  in  morals,  the  relaxing 
of  the  constraint  of  publicly  accepted  standards,  there  is,  of 
course,  a  dangerous  drift  toward  self-indulgence  and  moral 
nihilism.  It  becomes  all  the  more  necessary  that  conscience 
be  strong  and  sensitive,  that  inner  restraints  take  the  place 
of  outer.  In  the  lack  of  a  mature  moral  insight,  which  is 
one  of  the  latest  of  mental  developments,  and  indeed,  where 
it  exists,  to  reinforce  its  pale  affirmations  w^ith  greater 
impulsive  power,  a  stern  sense  of  duty  is  a  veritable  rock  of 
salvation.  Many  a  people  have  perished,  many  a  brilliant 
hope  of  civilization  been  lost,  because  of  its  lack.  So  we 
cannot  wonder  when  moralists  put  it  forward  as  the  foun- 
dation-stone of  all  morality  and  seek  to  buUd  their  systems 
upon  it.  To  a  man  who  has  been  bred  to  obey  the  inner 
voice,  it  seems  the  very  source  and  basis  of  the  right;  it  is  '^o 
unescapable,  so  authoritative,  that  it  cannot  be  deemed  de- 
rived, or  evolved  by  a  mechanical  process  of  selection.  It 
figures  as  something  ultimate  and  unanalyzable,  if  not 
frankly  supernatural;  that  it  is  a  mere  instrument  in  the 
attainment  of  an  ulterior  end,  to  be  used  or  rejected  accord- 
ing to  its  observed  usefulness,  is  an  abhorrent  thought. 

There  has  thus  arisen  a  school  of  philosophers  who  base 
their  justification  of  morality  entirely  uj>on  the  deliverances 
of  conscience.  Their  theories  vary  in  detail  and  have  received 
sundry  names;  we  will  group  them  here  for  convenience 
under  the  general  caption  "moral  intuit ionism."  As  a  rule 
they  steer  clear  of  the  historic  point  of  view;  they  refuse  to 


62  TIIE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

believe  that  conscience  has  a  natural  history.  Nor  are  they 
usually  keen  at  psychological  analysis;  the  numberless 
variations  in  form  which  conscience  assumes  in  different 
individuals  are,  for  their  purposes,  better  ignored.  Instead 
cf  analyzing  the  moral  sense  into  its  components  and  describ- 
ing the  mental  stuff  of  which  it  is  composed,  instead  of  trac- 
ing its  genesis  and  studying  the  forces  that  have  produced  it, 
they  wax  eloquent  over  its  importance  and  universality.  As 
preachers  they  are  admirable.  But  the  foundation  they 
provide  for  morality  is  slippery.  It  amounts  to  saying, 
"We  ought  to  do  right  because  we  know  we  ought! "  When 
we  ask  how  we  can  be  sure,  in  view  of  the  general  fallibility 
of  human  conviction,  that  we  are  not  mistaken  in  our  assur- 
ance, and  following  a  false  light,  they  can  but  reiterate  in 
altered  phraseology  that  we  know  because  we  know. 

To  these  intuitionists,  and  to  the  popular  mind  very 
often,  the  approval  or  disapproval  of  conscience  is  immedi^ 
ate,  intuitive,  and  unerring.  Its  authority  is  absolute  and 
not  to  be  questioned.  We  have  this  faculty  within  us  that 
tells  us  as  surely  what  is  right  and  what  wrong  as  our  color- 
sense  tells  us  what  is  red  and  what  green.  Some  people  may, 
to  be  sure,  be  color-blind,  or  have  defective  consciences; 
but  the  great  mass  of  unsophisticated  people  possess  this 
innate  guide  and  commandment,  a  quite  sufficient  warrant 
for  aU  our  distinctions  of  good  and  evil.  Honest  men  do  not 
really  differ  in  their  moral  judgments.  They  may  misunder- 
stand one  another's  concepts  and  engage  in  verbal  disputes ; 
but  at  bottom  their  moral  sense  approves  and  disapproves 
the  same  acts.  Our  moral  differences  come  mainly  from  the 
deluding  effects  of  passion  and  the  sophisticated  ingenuities 
of  the  intellect.  We  should  "return  to  nature,"  go  by  our- 
selves alone,  and  listen  to  the  inner  voice.  If  we  sincerely 
listen  and  obey  we  shall  always  do  right.  ^ 

^  "But  truth  aud  right,  fouuded  in  the  eternal  and  necessary  reason  of 


CAN  WE  BASE  MORALITY  UPON  CONSCIENCE         63 

We  cannot  but  recognize  a  certain  amount  of  practical 
truth  in  this  picture.  But  it  is  over-simpHfied,  and  it  is  fun- 
damentally unsatisfactory  to  the  intellect.  We  shall  now 
pass  in  review  its  most  obvious  inadequacies. 

Do  the  deliverances  of  different  people's  consciences  agree? 

Nothing  is  more  notorious  to  an  imbiased  observer  than 
the  conscientious  differences  between  men.  Even  among 
members  of  a  single  community,  with  closely  similar 
inheritance  and  environment,  we  find  marked  divergence  in 
moral  judgment.  And  when  we  compare  widely  different 
times  and  places  we  are  apt  to  wonder  if  there  is  any  com- 
mon ground.  It  is  only  a  very  smug  provincialism  that  can 
attribute  the  alien  standards  of  other  races  and  nations  to  a 
disregard  of  the  light.  Mohammedans  and  Buddhists  have 
believed  as  firmly  in,  and  fought  as  passionately  for,  their 
moral  convictions  as  Christians  have  for  theirs.  When  we 
survey  the  vast  amount  of  material  amassed  by  anthropol- 
ogists, we  find  that,  as  has  been  often  said,  there  is  hardly 
a  vice  that  has  not  somewhere  been  deemed  a  virtue,  and 
hardly  a  virtue  but  has  been  branded  as  a  vice.  History  is 
full  of  the  pathos  of  havoc  wrought  by  conscientious  men, 
of  foolish  and  ruinous  acts  which  they  have  braced  them- 
selves to  do  for  conscience'  sake.  One  has  but  to  think  of  the 
earnest  and  prayerful  inquisitors  and  persecutors  in  the 
mediaeval  Church,  of  the  Puritans  destroying  the  stained- 
glass  windows  and  paintings  of  the  Madonna,  of  the  caliph 
who  destroyed  the  great  Alexandrian  library,  bereaving  the 
world  at  one  blow  of  that  priceless  culture-inheritance. 
Written  biography,  fiction  which  truly  represents  life,  and 
individual  memory  are  full  of  sad  instances  where  deadlocks 

things,  is  what  every  man  can  judge  of,  when  laid  before  him.  'T  is  neces- 
sarily one  and  the  same  to  every  man's  understanding,  just  as  light  is  the 
same,  to  every  man's  eyes."  (S.  Clarke,  Discourse  upon  Natural  ReligioOf 
1706.) 


64  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

of  conscience  have  sundered  those  who  truly  loved  and 
wrought  irremediable  pain  and  loss.  Lately  the  newspapers 
told  us  of  the  heroic  suicide  of  General  Nogi  and  his  wife, 
who  felt  it  their  duty  not  to  survive  their  emperor.  To  a 
Catholic  Christian  this  imperious  dictate  of  the  Japanese 
conscience  would  be  a  deadly  sin.  And  so  it  goes.  There 
is  no  need  to  multiply  instances  of  what  can  be  observed  on 
every  hand.  Conscience  reflects  the  traditions  and  influences 
amid  which  a  man  grows  up. 

But  if  the  deliverances  of  different  men's  consciences 
conflict,  how  shall  w^e  know  which  to  trust?  If  any  particular 
command  of  the  inner  voice  may  be  morally  wrong,  how  can 
we  trust  it  at  all.'^  There  are  obviously  morbid  and  perverted 
consciences;  but  if  conscience  itself  is  the  ultimate  authority, 
and  is  not  to  be  justified  and  criticized  by  some  deeper  test, 
what  right  have  we  to  call  any  of  its  manifestations  morbid 
or  perverted?  Is  it  not  a  species  of  egotism  to  hold  one's  own 
moral  discernment  as  superior  to  another's;  and  if  so,  do  we 
not  need  some  criterion  by  which  to  judge  between  them? 
Surely  the  diversity  of  its  judgments  makes  conscience  an  im- 
possible foundation  for  morality;  we  should  have  as  many 
codes  as  con-sciences  and  fall  into  a  hopeless  confusion. 

If  conscience  ever3nvhere  agreed  in  its  dictates,  could  we 
base  morality  upon  it? 

Even,  however,  if  conscience  led  us  all  in  the  same  direc- 
tion, would  that  prove  its  authority?  Perhaps  we  should  all 
be  following  a  will  o'  the  wisp,  and  foolishly  sacrificing  our 
desires  to  an  idol  of  the  tribe,  a  universal  superstition. 
Must  it  not  show  its  credentials  before  it  can  legitimately 
command  our  allegiance?  It  is  but  one  specific  type  of 
impulse  among  many;  why  should  it  be  given  the  reins,  the 
control  over  all?  Do  w^e  say,  because  conscience  makes  for 
our  best  welfare?   The  answer  would,  in  general,  be  true; 


CAN  WE  BASE  MORALITY  UPON  CONSCIENCE         65 

but  we  should  then  be  putting  as  our  test  and  ultimate 
authority  the  attainment  of  our  welfare,  which  would  be  to 
abandon  the  point  of  view  we  are  discussing.  Conscience 
claims  authority.  But  that  might  conceivably  be  mere 
impudence  and  tyranny.  Moreover,  there  are  those  who 
feel  no  call  to  follow  conscience;  how  could  we  prove  to  them 
that  they  ought?  Is  it  not  the  height  of  irrationality  to  bow 
down  before  an  unexplained  and  mysterious  impulse  and 
allow  it  to  sway  our  conduct  without  knowing  why?  If  the 
"ought"  is  really  shot  out  of  the  blue  at  us,  if  there  is  no 
justification,  no  imperious  demand  for  morality  but  the 
existence  of  this  inner  push,  why  might  we  not  raise  our 
heads,  refuse  to  be  dominated  by  it,  and  live  the  life  of  free 
men,  following  the  happy  breezes  of  our  desires?  That  is 
precisely  what  many  have  done,  men  who  have  reached 
maturity  enough  of  mind  to  see  the  emptiness  of  following 
an  ingrained  impulse  simply  because  it  exists,  but  not  a  fu)l 
enough  maturity  to  see  beyond  to  the  real  justification  and 
significance  of  conscience. 

A  further  realization  of  the  inadequacy  of  the  intuitive 
theory  comes  when  we  observe  that  conscience  is  by  no 
means  always  clear  in  its  dictates.  It  often  leaves  us  in  the 
liu*ch.  Developed  in  us  as  it  has  been  by  circumstance  and 
suggestion,  it  helps  us  usually  only  in  certain  recognized 
types  of  situation.  When  new  cases  arise,  it  is  hopelessly  at 
sea.  As  a  practical  working  principle,  conscientiousness  is 
not  only  apt  to  be  a  perverted  and  provincial  guide,  it  is 
insufficient  for  the  solving  of  fresh  and  difficult  problems. 
The  science  of  casuistry  has  been  developed  in  great  detail 
to  supply  this  lack,  to  apply  the  well-recognized  deliverances 
of  a  certain  accepted  type  of  conscience  to  the  various 
possibilities  of  situation.  These  systems,  however,  reflect 
the  idiosyncrasies  of  their  makers,  and  have  never  won  wide 
approbation.    Morahty  must  remain  largely  experimental* 


86  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

individual.  Conscience  will  play  a  very  useful  role  in  spur- 
ring us  to  our  recognized  duty  in  the  commoner  situations, 
but  for  all  the  more  delicate  decisions  we  need  a  more 
ultimate  touchstone.  We  must  grasp  the  underlying  prin- 
ciples of  right  conduct,  and  weigh  the  relative  goods  attain- 
able by  each  possible  act.  A  well-balanced  and  normal 
conscience  will  save  us  the  recurrent  reasoning  out  of 
typical  perplexities,  but  it  must  be  supplemented  by  an  in- 
sight into  the  ends  to  be  aimed  for  and  kept  rather  strictly 
in  its  place. 

What  is  the  plausibility  of  moral  intuitionism? 

It  is  never  wholly  satisfactory  merely  to  refute  a  theory; 
we  must  see  its  plausibility  and  understand  its  appeal  if  we 
are  to  be  sure  of  doing  it  justice.  In  the  case  of  the  intuition- 
theory  it  is  easy  to  discern  the  reasons  that  have  kept  it 
alive  —  though  it  has  never  been  at  all  widespread  among 
thinking  men  —  in  spite  of  the  obvious  objections  that  can 
be  raised  to  it. 

(1)  Perhaps  the  original  source  of  the  doctrine  was  a 
certain  sort  of  religious  faith;  it  follows  easily  as  a  corollary 
to  the  behef  in  God.  If  God  commands  us  to  do  right,  it  is 
felt.  He  must  have  given  us  some  way  to  know  what  is  right. 
The  inner  voice  of  conscience  may  be  just  such  a  God-given 
guide;  therefore  it  is  such  a  guide;  therefore  it  is  infallible. 
A  natural  piece  of  a  priori  reasoning,  on  a  par  with  the 
Christian  Scientist's  syllogism:  God  is  good;  a  good  God 
would  not  permit  evil  to  exist;  therefore  there  is  no  evil. 
Unfortunately  a  priori  reasoning  has  to  yield  to  actual 
experience.  Since  we  see  that  conscience  is  not  infallible 
and  evil  does  exist,  there  must  be  some  fallacy  in  the 
arguments. 

(2)  Another  source  of  the  doctrine's  strength  Hes  in  its 
simpUcity.  It  is  a  great  mental  relief  to  drop  the  tangle  of 


CAN  WE  BASE  MORALITY  UPON  CONSCIENCE         67 

confusing  considerations,  to  stop  trying  to  reason  out  one's 
course  of  action,  and  follow  a  sujiposedly  reliable  guide. 
The  intuition-theory  goes  naturally  with  a  moral  couiserva- 
tism  which  dreads  the  chaos  and  uncertainty  that  follow 
upon  the  doubt  of  established  moral  habits.  It  is  so  much 
more  comfortable  to  feel  that  one  has  already  the  one 
divine  and  ultimate  code,  that  one  has  always  done  right 
because  one  has  steadily  obeyed  the  inner  light!  It  is 
reassuring  to  divide  the  world  into  the  sheep  and  the  goats, 
—  if  one  can  believe  one's  self  a  sheep.  But  what  —  O 
dismay !  —  what  if  one  were  after  all  a  goat !  A  great  deal 
of  mental  anguish  has  beea  caused  by  the  pseudo-simplicity 
of  this  dichotomy.  There  is  no  such  clean-cut  and  clearly 
visible  line  between  right  and  wrong;  there  is  instead  a 
bewildering  maze  of  goods.  Hardly  any  choice  but  involves 
a  sacrifice,  hardly  any  ideal  but  has  its  disadvantages.  One 
learns  with  experience  to  be  wary  of  these  simple  theories, 
these  closet  theories  which  collapse  when  they  are  brought 
out  into  the  light  of  day. 

(3)  We  must,  however,  be  just.  The  fact  of  the  reliability 
of  conscience,  and  the  wisdom  of  following  its  guidance, 
holds  over  a  wide  range  of  human  experience  —  and  the 
experience  which  is  most  apparent  upon  the  surface.  For  all 
ordinary  cases  we  of  Christendom  agree  without  hesitation 
that  murder  is  WTong,  and  lying,  and  steahng.  It  seems  a 
waste  of  time  to  try  to  justify  our  instinctive  verdict,  and  the 
attempt  would  only  be  bewildering  to  most  men.  It  is  only 
when  brought  face  to  face  with  some  alien  code  that  we  see 
the  need  of  digging  below  intuition.  A  missionary  to  the 
South  Seas  may  be  confronted  with  men  to  whom  the  killing 
of  other  tribesmen  and  the  accumulation  of  skulls  is  a 
glorious  and  honorable  feat,  or  to  whom  skillful  lying  is  an 
enviable  and  proud  accomplishment.  But  most  of  us  live 
among  neighbors  whose  conscience  is  comfortably  like  our 


68  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MORALITY 

own,  and  only  occasionally  become  seriously  perplexed.  In 
the  great  mass  of  everyday  occasions  we  do  know  our  duty 
intuitively,  and  we  do  agree  with  one  another.  We  recognize 
a  duty  at  sight  without  realizing  its  teleology.  It  is  not, 
indeed,  an  innate  faculty;  it  was  acquired  dui'ing  our  forma- 
tive years;  it  is  not  infallible.  But  the  forces  which  have 
gone  to  the  making  of  it  are  similar  in  all  our  lives,  and  tlie 
products  are  more  alike  than  unlike. 

(4)  Finally,  it  is  true  that  to  obey  conscience  is,  in  a 
sense,  to  do  right,  to  be  moral,  no  matter  how  distorted 
conscience  may  be.  Conscientiousness  is  in  itself  a  virtue. 
To  this  point  we  shall  later  return.  We  need  only  say  here 
that  conscientiousness  is  not  enough.  Life  is  not  so  simple 
a  matter  as  that.  We  need  judgment,  sanity,  insight,  as 
well  as  a  strong  sense  of  duty.  We  need  to  correct  and  train 
conscience,  to  adjust  it  to  our  real  needs,  to  recognize  that 
it  is  a  means,  not  an  end. 

Our  discussion,  though  rapid,  should  show  that  we  cannot 
start  with  the  "ought"  of  our  conscience,  or  moral  sense, 
and  erect  our  moral  theory  upon  that.  Conscience  itself 
needs  to  be  explained.  Its  commands  need  to  be  justified  by 
reference  to  some  more  ultimate  criterion.  It  needs  to  be 
pruned  of  its  fanaticism,  developed  where  it  is  weak,  and 
kept  in  line  with  our  growing  insight  into  what  is  best  in 
conduct.  Riiskin  once  summed  the  matter  up  by  saying, 
"Obey  thy  conscience!  But  first  be  sure  it  is  not  the  con- 
science of  an  ass!"  Conscience  may  be  a  veiy  dangerous 
guide.  And  even  where  it  is  normal  and  useful  it  must  not 
be  invested  with  any  absolute  and  irrational  authority. 

Historical  study,  then,  reveals  the  gTowth  of  personal  and 
social  morality  through  the  action  of  forces  which  tend  to 
drive  men  into  conduct  that  makes  for  their  welfare  more 
surely  than  did  their  primitive  animal  impulses.  Conscience 


CAN  WE  BASE  MORALITY  UPON  CONSCIENCE        69 

arises  through  these  same  forces.  Though  subject  to  per- 
version and  infinitely  variant  in  detail,  community-morals 
and  individual  conscience  have  been  the  chief  means  of 
making  man's  life  safe  and  wisely  directed.  The  criterion 
that  emerges  from  such  a  study  is  not,  however,  the  bald 
existence  of  codes  of  morals,  or  of  conscience,  but  the  human 
welfare  which  those  codes  and  that  conscience  exist  to  serve. 
To  an  exposition  of  the  ways  in  which  morality  serves  and 
should  increasingly  serve  human  welfare,  we  now  turn. 

Classic  intuitional  theories  will  be  found  developed  in:  Price. 
Review  of  the  Chief  Questions  and  Difficulties  of  AI orals  (1757), 
Shaftesbury,  An  Inquiry  Concerning  Virtue  or  Merit  (1699).  Fo 
Hutcheson,  An  Inquiry  Concerning  Moral  Good  and  Evil  (1725). 
Joseph  Butler,  Fifteen  Sermons  upon  Human  Nature,  ii,  iii  (172C). 
J.  Martineau,  Types  of  Ethical  Theory  (1885). 

Criticisms  of  the  intuitional  theories  will  be  found  in:  S.E.  Mezes, 
Ethics,  chap,  in;  Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics,  chap,  xvi,  sec.  3; 

F.  Paulsen,  System  of  Ethics,  pt.  n,  chap,  v,  sec.  4;  H.  Spencer,  Data 
of  Ethics,  chap,  m,  sec.  14;  chap,  rv,  sec.  20;  Muirhead,  Elements 
of  Ethics,  sees.  32-35.  H.  Rashdall,  The  Theory  of  Good  and  Evilf 
bk.  I,  chap.  IV.  W.  Fite,  Introductory  Study  of  Ethics,  chap.  ix.  W. 

G.  Everett,  Moral  Values,  chap.  ix. 


PART   II 
THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  BASIS  OF  RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

Historical  knowledge  without  critical  insight  leads  to 
moral  nihilism,  the  conviction  of  the  pre-Socratic  Sophists 
that,  since  every  time  and  people  has  its  own  standards, 
there  is  no  real  objective  right  and  wrong.  Morahty  is  seen 
to  be  not  a  fixed  code  sent  readymade  from  heaven,  but  a 
set  of  habits  and  intuitions  that  have  had  a  natural  origin 
and  development.  Our  particular  moral  code  is  perceived 
to  be  but  one  out  of  many,  our  type  of  conscience  psycho- 
logically on  the  same  level  with  the  strange,  and  to  us 
perverted,  sense  of  duty  of  alien  races.  How  can  we  judge 
impartially  between  our  standards  and  those  of  the  Fiji 
Islanders.^  What  warrant  have  we  for  saying  that  our  code 
is  a  better  one  than  theirs.'^  Or  how  do  we  know  that  the 
whole  thing  is  not  superstition? 

What  is  the  nature  of  that  intrmsic  goodness  upon  which 
ultimately  all  valuations  rest? 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  underneath  the  manifold  disagree- 
ments as  to  good  and  bad,  there  is  a  deep  stratum  of  abso- 
lute certainty.  It  is  only  in  the  more  complex  and  delicate 
matters  that  doubt  arises;  all  men  share  in  those  elemen- 
tary perceptions  of  good  and  bad  that  make  up  the  bulk  of 
human  valuation.  To  men  everywhere  it  is  an  evil  to  be  in 
severe  physical  pain  or  to  be  maimed  in  body,  to  be  shut 
away  from  air,  from  food,  from  other  people.  It  is  a  good  to 
taste  an  appetizing  dish,  to  exercise  when  well  and  rested,  to 
hear  harmonious  music,  to  feel  the  sweet  emotion  of  love. 
The  fact  that  men  agree  upon  judgments  does  not  prove 
tliem  true;  but  these  are  not  judgments,  they  are  percep- 


74  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

tions.^  To  call  love  good  is  not  to  give  an  opinion,  it  is  to 
describe  a  fact.  It  is  a  matter  of  direct  first-hand  feeling, 
whose  reahty  consists  in  its  being  felt.  To  say  that  these 
experiences  are  good  or  bad  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  they 
Jeel  good  or  bad;  there  can  be  no  dispute  about  it. 

This  is  the  bottom  fact  of  ethics.  Different  experiences 
have  different  intrinsic  worth  as  they  pass.  There  is  a 
chiaroscuro  of  consciousness,  a  light  and  shade  of  immediate 
goodness  and  badness  over  all  our  variegated  moments.  The 
good  moments  are  their  own  excuse  for  being,  a  part  of  the 
brightness  and  worth  of  life.  They  need  nothing  ulterior  to 
justify  them.  The  bad  moments  feel  bad,  and  that  is  the 
end  of  it;  they  are  bad-feeling  moments,  and  no  sophistica- 
tion can  deny  it.  Conscious  life  looked  at  from  this  point  of 
view,  and  abstracted  from  all  its  other  aspects,  is  a  flux  of 
plus  and  minus  values.  Certain  of  its  moments  have  a 
greater  felt  worth  than  others;  some  experiences  are  intrin- 
sically undesirable,  the  shadows  of  life;  others,  intrinsically 
sweet,  a  part  of  its  sunshine.  In  the  last  analysis,  all  differ- 
ences in  value,  including  all  moral  distinctions,  rest  upon 
this  disparity  in  the  immediate  worth  of  conscious  states.^ 

We  may  say  absolutely  that  if  it  were  not  for  this  f unda- 

*  Or  affections.  Let  no  one  quarrel  about  the  psychological  terms  used; 
the  only  important  matter  is  to  note  the  fact,  however  it  be  phrased,  that 
"good"  and  "bad"  in  their  basic  usage  are  descriptive  terms.  A  toothache 
is  bad  just  as  indisputably  as  the  sky  is  blue.  The  word  "  bad  "  has  a  definite 
meaning,  just  as  the  word  "blue"  has;  and  the  toothache  is,  among  other 
things,  precisely  what  we  mean  by  "bad,"  just  as  the  look  of  the  cloudless 
sky  by  daylight  is  what  we  mean  by  "blue." 

2  Cf .  G.  Santayana,  Tke  Sense  of  Beauty,  p.  104:  "  All  worth  leads  us  baek 
to  actual  feeling  somewhere,  or  else  evaporates  into  nothing  —  into  a  word 
and  a  superstition." 

I  cannot  but  feel  that  contemporary  definitions  of  value  that  omit  refer- 
ence to  hedonic  differences  —  e.g.,  that  of  Professor  Brown  {Journal  of 
Philosophy,  Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods,  vol.  11,  p.  32):  "Value  is 
degree  of  adequacy  of  a  potentiality  to  the  realization  of  the  effect  by  virtue 
of  which  it  is  a  potentiality  "  —  miss  the  real  meaning  of  "  value."  We  do, 
indcexl,  speak  occasionally  of  a:  as  having  value  as  a  means  to  y,  when  y  is 
JlK)t  good  or  a  mean?  to  a  good.  But  that  seems  to  me  a  misuse  of  the  word. 


THE  BASIS  OF  RIGHT  AND  WRONG  75 

mental  difference  in  feeling  there  would  be  no  such  thing  as 
morality.  There  might  conceivably  be  a  world  in  which 
consciousness  should  exist  without  any  agreeable  or  dis- 
agreeable quahties;  in  such  a  world  nothing  would  matter; 
all  acts  would  be  equally  indifferent.  Or  there  might  be  a 
world  in  which  all  experiences  were  equally  pleasurable  or 
painful;  in  such  a  case  all  acts  would  be  equally  good  or 
equally  sad;  there  would  be  no  ground  for  choice.  One  might 
in  any  of  these  hypothetical  worlds  be  driven  by  mechanical 
impulse  or  fitful  whim  to  do  this  or  that,  but  there  would  be 
no  rational  basis  for  preference.  Such,  however,  is  not  the 
case.  Comparative  valuation  is  possible;  all  secondary  goods 
and  evils  arise,  all  morality,  all  art  and  religion  and  science 
have  their  wellspring  in  this  brute  fact,  this  primordial 
parting  of  the  ways  between  the  more  and  the  less  desirable 
phases  of  possible  conscious  life. 

Morahty  of  an  elementary  type  would  exist  on  this  level 
even  without  the  further  comphcations  of  actual  life.  At 
least  a  very  important  art  would  arise;  whether  or  not  we 
should  call  it  morality  is  a  mere  matter  of  definition.  For 
a  choice  between  alternative  immediately  felt  goods  would 
arise,  and  the  problem  of  how  to  get  the  better  kinds  of 
experience  and  avoid  the  worse  would  demand  solution. 
Every  bit  of  plus  value  added  to  experience  would  make  the 
world  so  much  the  brighter,  as  would  every  bit  of  pain 
avoided. 

There  are,  to  be  sure,  the  mystical  optimisms  and  pessi^ 
misms  to  be  reckoned  with,  the  sweeping  assertions  of  certaLfv 
schools  and  individuals  that  everything  is  equally  good  or 
equally  bad.  Such  undiscriminating  formulas  are  either  the 
mere  objectification  of  a  mood,  of  some  unusual  period  of 
ecstasy  or  sorrow,  a  blind  outcry  of  thanksgiving  or  of 
bitterness,  or  they  are  the  clumsy  expression  of  some  prac- 
tical truth,  as,  the  wisdom  of  acquiescence,  and  the  futility 
of  preoccupation  with  evil.    But  taken  seriously  and  liter- 


76  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

ally  such  statements  are  simply  untrue  to  the  facts  and  blur 
our  fundamental  perceptions.  If  actually  accredited,  either 
would  lead  to  quiescence;  if  everything  were  equally  good  or 
evil  all  striving  would  be  meaningless,  one  might  as  well 
jump  from  a  housetop  or  walk  into  the  fire.  But  as  a  matter 
of  fact  such  mystical  assertions  are  indulged  in  only  in  the 
inactive  moments  of  life,  and  mean  no  more  than  a  lyric 
poem  or  a  burst  of  music.  Every  one  in  his  practical 
moments  acknowledges  tacitly,  at  least,  the  difference 
between  the  intrinsic  goodness  and  badness  of  experiences. 
A  life  of  even  delight  or  even  wretchedness,  or  of  colorless 
indifference,  is  not  inconceivable,  but  it  is  not  the  lot  of  any 
actual  human  beings. 

The  larger  quarrel  betv/een  optimists  and  pessimists  need 
not,  for  our  purposes,  be  settled.  Life  may  be  a  very  good 
thing,  on  the  whole,  or  a  very  bad  thing.  The  only  point 
we  need  to  note  is  that  it  is  at  any  rate  a  varying  thing. 
Some  experiences  are  more  worth  having  than  others. 
Moral  theory  needs  no  further  admission  to  find  its  foothold. 
Nor  do  we  need  to  discuss  the  problem  of  evil.  It  may  be 
that  all  pain  has  its  ultimate  uses,  that  nothing  is  "really" 
bad,  if  we  take  that  to  mean  that  all  evil  has  a  necessary 
existence  as  a  means  to  a  good  otherwise  unattainable  and 
worth  the  cost.  But  however  useful  as  a  means  evil  may  be, 
it  is  none  the  less  evil  and  regrettable.  It  is  not  good  qua 
pain.  If  the  same  amount  of  good  could  be  obtained  without 
the  preliminary  evil,  it  were  better  to  skip  it.  In  short,  the 
3xistence  of  different  values  in  immediate  experience  is 
indisputable;  we  may  call  tJ^em  for  convenience  intrinsic 
goodness  and  badness. 

What  is  extrinsic  goodness? 

But  there  is  a  radically  different  sense  of  the  words 
**good"  and  *'bad";  namely,  that  in  which  we  say  that  a 
thing  is  good  for  this  or  that.   This  is  the  kind  of  goodness 


THE  BASIS  OF  RIGHT  AND    WHONG  77 

the  things  about  us  have;  they  are  good  for  the  production 
of  intrinsic  goodness  (as  we  are  using  that  phrase),  which  is 
always  (so  far  as  we  know)  something  produced  in  Hving 
organisms.^  To  put  the  same  truth  in  other  terms,  things 
are  good  or  bad  only  with  respect  to  their  effect  upon  our 
conscious  experience. ^  Primitive  man,  indeed,  imagines  in- 
animate things  as  having  intrinsic  goodness  or  badness, 
i,e.,  as  feeling  happy  or  unhappy,  benevolent  or  malignant. 
We  still  speak  of  a  serene  sky,  an  angry  storm-cloud,  a 
caressing  breeze,  and  in  a  hundred  ways  read  our  affective 
life  into  material  objects.  But  we  now  recognize  all  these 
ascriptions  as  cases  of  the  pathetic  fallacy,  poetically  signif- 
icant but  literally  untrue.  Animism,  which  looms  so  large 
in  primitive  religion,  consists  in  thus  objectifying  into 
things  the  emotions  they  arouse  in  us.  In  reality  all  of 
these  affective  qualities  exist  in  us,  not  in  the  outer  ob- 
jects; so  far  as  our  epithets  have  an  objective  truth  they 
describe  not  the  content  of  the  objects,  but  their  function 
in  our  lives.  When  we  speak  of  delicious  food,  beautiful 
pictures,  ugly  colors,  we  mean  strictly  that  these  objects 
are  such  as  to  arouse  in  us  certain  peculiar  pleasant  or  un- 
pleasant feelings.  So  that  apart  from  the  existence  of  con- 
sciousness there  would  be  no  goodness  or  badness  at  all.^ 

*  We  also  occasionally  speak  of  things  as  being  "good  for"  something 
else  when  that  something  else  is  not  a  good  or  a  means  to  a  good  (see  preced- 
ing footnote) ;  as,  "sunshine  is  good  for  weeds."  But  as  applied  to  evils,  the 
phrase  "good  for"  more  often  means  "good  to  abolish";  as,  "hellebore  is 
good  for  weeds."  These  usages  illustrate  the  ambiguity  of  all  our  common 
ethical  terms.  To  consider  them  here  would  be,  however,  needlessly  con- 
fusing. The  two  senses  of  the  term  "good"  mentioned  in  the  text  are  the 
only  senses  we  need  to  bear  in  mind  for  the  purposes  of  ethics. 

'  I  am  fully  aware  of  the  widespread  current  distaste  for  the  word  "con- 
sciousness," with  its  idealistic  associations.  The  term  seems  to  me  too 
useful  to  discard;  but  I  wish  to  point  out  that,  as  I  use  it,  it  involves  no 
metaphysical  viewpoint,  but  is  equally  consonant  with  idealism  or  realism 
of  any  sort. 

^  The  neo-realists  would  prefer  to  say,  perhaps,  "apart  from  the  exist- 
ence of  organisms,"  and  this  may  be  an  exacter  phrase;  we  may  have 


78  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

It  is  the  existence  of  felt  goodness,  intrinsic  goodness,  and  its 
opposite,  that  allows  us  to  attribute  to  objects  another  kind 
of  goodness  or  badness,  according  as  they  are  calculated  to 
produce  in  us  the  former  kind.  This  kind  of  goodness  and 
badness  we  may  call  extrinsic. 

It  is  only  by  thus  attributing  a  sort  of  goodness  and  bad- 
ness to  senseless  objects  that  we  can  aim  for  and  avoid  the 
good  and  bad  phases  of  conscious  life.  In  themselves  these 
conscious  moments  are  largely  unnamable  and  inexpressible. 
There  are,  as  it  is,  dumb  objectless  ecstasies  that  are  of 
transcendent  sweetness;  but  we  do  not  usually  know  how  to 
reproduce  them,  and  for  the  most  part  we  have  to  overlook 
these  goods  in  our  ideals  and  aim  only  for  those  that  we  can 
associate  with  recognized  outer  stimuli.  For  practical 
purposes  we  think  rather  in  terms  of  outer  objects  than  of 
our  states  of  experience;  nature  has  had  need  to  make  men 
but  very  slightly  introspective.  And  so  it  is  that  this  derived 
use  of  our  eulogistic  and  disparaging  terms  plays  a  larger 
part  than  its  primary  application.  But  the  essential  point 
to  note  is  that  "goodness"  and  "badness'*  in  the  first 
instance  refer  to  the  fundamental  cleavage  between  the 
affective  qualities  of  experience,  and  only  secondarily  and 
by  metonymy  apply  to  objects  in  the  physical  world  which 
affect  our  conscious  states. 

The  next  point  to  note  is  that  our  conscious  experiences 
and  activities  themselves  have  not  only  their  intrinsic  value, 
as  they  pass,  but  an  extrinsic  value,  as  means  toward  future 

pleeisiires  and  pains  that  remain  out  of  connection  with  that  interrelateif 
stream  of  experience  to  which  we  usually  limit  the  term  "consciousness/" 
On  the  other  hand,  may  it  not  be  that  God,  and  angels,  or  other  disem* 
bodied  beings,  have  consciousness,  and  intrinsic  goodness,  without  having 
organisms?  Of  course,  for  all  we  know,  the  world  about  us  may  be  chock 
full  of  pleasm-es  and  pains.  But  for  practical  purposes,  and  so  far  as  our 
morality  is  concerned,  either  the  statement  in  the  text  or  the  suggested 
equivalent  is  true.  The  point  is,  tb*vt  the  foundation  of  morality  is  in  tis 
—  whether  you  call  us  in  the  last  analysis  consciousnesses  or  organisms. 


THE  BASIS  OF  RIGHT  AND  WTIONG  79 

intrinsic  values.  Each  phase  of  experience  has  its  own  worth, 
while  it  lasts,  and  also  has  its  results  in  determining  future 
phases  with  their  varying  degrees  of  worth.  Our  reveries, 
our  debauches,  our  sacrifices  are  good  or  bad  in  their  effects 
as  well  as  in  themselves.  Thus  all  experience  has  a  double 
rating;  acts  are  not  only  pleasant,  agreeable,  intrinsically 
desirable,  but  also  wise,  prudent,  useful,  virtuous,  i.e., 
extrinsically  desirable.  These  extrinsic  values  usually  bulk 
much  larger  in  the  end  than  the  first  transitorj^  intrinsic 
value;  but  our  natural  tendency  is  to  forget  them  and  guide 
our  action  by  immediate  values.  Hence  the  need  of  a  con- 
tinual disparagement  of  the  latter,  and  the  many  means  men 
have  adopted  of  emphasizing  the  importance  of  the  former. 
Yet,  after  all,  our  concern  for  the  extrinsic  value  of  acts  has 
to  do  only  with  means  to  ends;  and  unless  acts  tend  to  pro- 
duce intrinsic  goodness  somewhere  they  are  not  extrinsically 
good.  There  is  no  sense  in  sacrificing  an  immediate  good 
unless  the  alternative  act  will  tend  in  its  ultimate  effects  to 
produce  a  greater  good,  or  unless  the  act  sacrificed  would 
have  brought,  after  its  present  intrinsic  good,  some  greater 
intrinsic  evil.  The  sacrifice  of  a  good  for  no  greater  good  is 
asceticism  or  fanaticism.  From  this  there  is  no  ultimate 
salvation  but  by  referring  all  acts  to  the  final  touchstone  — 
asking  which  will  produce  in  the  end  the  greatest  amount 
of  intrinsic  good  and  the  least  intrinsic  evil. 

What  sort  of  conduct,  then,  is  good?  And  how  shall  we  define 
virtue? 

We  are  brought  thus  to  the  conception  of  an  art  which 
shall  not  only  teach  us  which  of  two  immediate,  intrinsic, 
goods  is  the  better,  but  shall  consider  all  the  near  and  remote 
consequences  of  acts,  and  direct  us  to  that  conduct  which 
will  produce  most  good  in  the  end.^  That  sort  of  behavior 

*  The  impossibility  of  finding  any  other  ultimate  basis  for  our  conception 
of  moral  "  good  "  or  "  bad  "  is  well  expressed  by  Socrates  in  Plato's  Protof- 


80  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

5s  best  which  will  in  the  long  run  bring  into  being  the  greatest 
possible  amount  of  intrinsic  goodness  and  the  least  intrinsic 
evil.  For  goodness  of  conduct  we  commonly  use  the  term 
"virtue";  and  for  intrinsic  good  the  most  widely  accepted 
name  —  though  one  which  is  misleading  to  many  —  is 
''happiness."  So  we  may  say,  in  sum,  that  virtue  is  that 
manner  of  life  that  tends  to  happiness. 

Objection  is  occasionally  made  that  happiness  is  too  vague 
a  term,  too  elusive  a  concept,  to  be  set  forth  as  the  ultimate 
aim  of  conduct.  "Alas!"  says  Bradley,  "the  one  question 
which  no  one  can  answer  is,  What  is  happiness.'*"  But  this 
is  a  palpable  confusion  of  thought.  If  we  mean  by  the 
question,  "Wherein  is  happiness  to  be  found,  by  doing  what 
can  we  attain  it?"  then  the  answer  is,  indeed,  uncertain  in 
its  completeness;  it  is  precisely  to  answer  it  that  we  study 
ethics.  Or  if  we  mean,  "What  is  the  psychology  of  happi- 
ness?" the  answer  is  as  yet  dubious;  but  it  is  irrelevant* 
Whatever  its  psychological  conditions  and  the  means  to 
attain  it,  we  know  happiness  when  we  have  it.  The  puzzle 
is  not  to  recognize  it,  but  to  get  it.  By  happiness  we  mean 
the  steady  presence  of  what  we  have  called  intrinsic  good- 
ness and  the  absence  of  intrinsic  badness;  it  is  as  undefinable 

eras  (p.  354):  "Then  you  think  that  pain  is  an  evil  and  pleasure  is  a  good, 
and  even  pleasure  you  deem  an  evil,  when  it  robs  you  of  greater  pleasure 
than  it  gives,  or  causes  pain  greater  than  the  pleasure.  If,  however,  you  call 
pleasure  an  evil  in  regard  to  some  other  end  or  standard,  you  will  be  able 
to  show  us  that  standard.  But  you  have  none  to  show.  .  .  .  And  have  you 
not  a  similar  way  of  speaking  about  pain?  You  call  pain  a  good  when  it 
takes  away  greater  pains  than  those  which  it  has,  or  gives  pleasures  greater 
than  the  pains." 

He  then  goes  on  to  explain  the  need  of  morality, —  to  guide  us,  in  the 
face  of  the  foreshortening  effects  of  our  particular  situation,  to  what  will 
make  for  the  greatest  happiness  in  the  long  run  (p.  356):  "Do  not  the  same 
magnitudes  appear  larger  to  your  sight  when  near,  and  smaller  when  at  a 
distance?  .  .  .  Now  suppose  happiness  to  consist  in  doing  or  choosing  the 
greater,  and  in  not  doing  or  avoiding  the  less,  what  would  be  the  saving 
principle  of  human  life?  Would  not  tlie  act  of  measuring  be  the  saving  prii>' 
ciple?" 


THE  BASIS  OF  RIGHT  AND  WTIONG  81 

as  any  ultimate  element  of  experience,  but  as  well  known  to 
us  as  blackness  and  whiteness  or  light  and  dark. 

Take,  as  a  typical  moral  situation,  a  case  in  which  s 
thirsty  man  drinks  polluted  water.  In  the  diagram  the  arrow 
represents  the  direction  of  the  flow  of  time,  and  each  of  the 
ribbons  below  represents  the  stream  of  consciousness  of  an 
individual  concerned  —  the  uppermost  being  that  of  the 
thirsty  man  himself,  the  others  those  of  his  wife,  children,  or 
friends.    The  plus  sign  early  in  the  drinker's  stream  of 


experience  stands  for  the  plus  value  which  drinking  the 
water  effects  —  the  gratifying  taste  of  the  water  and  the 
allaying  of  the  discomfort  of  thirst  —  real  values,  whose 
worth  cannot  be  gainsaid.  Following,  in  his  own  stream  of 
experience,  are  a  row  of  minus  signs,  indicating  the  undesir- 
able penalties  in  his  own  life  which  follow  —  disease,  pain, 
deprivation  of  other  goods.  No  good  accrues  to  others, 
unless  the  slight  pleasing  of  seeing  his  thirst  allayed.  But 
evils  follow  in  their  experience:  worry,  sympathetic  pain  at 
his  suffering,  expense  of  doctor's  bills,  perhaps  (which  means 
deprivation  of  other  possible  goods),  etc.  It  is  clear  at  a 
glance  that  the  positive  good  att«'?.ined  is  not  worth  the 


82  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

lingering  and  widespread  evils;  and  the  act  of  drinking  the 
polluted  water,  though  to  a  very  thirsty  man  a  keen  tempta- 
tion, is  immoral.  Morality  is  thus  an  acting  upon  a  right 
perspective  of  life.  Personal  morality  considers  the  goods 
and  evils  in  the  one  stream  of  consciousness,  social  morality 
the  goods  and  evils  in  other  conscious  lives  concerned. 
Between  them  they  sum  up  the  law  and  the  prophets. 

The  best  life  for  humanity  is  that  which  is,  on  the  whole, 
felt  best;  not  necessarily  that  which  is  judged  best  by  this 
man  or  that,  —  for  our  judgments  are  narrow  and  misrepre- 
sent actual  values,  —  but  that  which  has  had  from  begin- 
ning to  end  the  greatest  total  of  happiness.  No  other  ulti- 
mate criterion  for  conduct  can  ever  justify  itself,  and  most 
theoretical  statements  reduce  to  this.  To  be  virtuous  is  to 
be  a  virtuoso  in  life.  All  sorts  of  objections  have  been  raised 
to  this  simple,  and  apparently  pagan,  way  of  stating  the 
case;  they  will  be  considered  in  due  time.  The  reader  is 
asked  to  refrain  from  parting  company  with  the  writer,  if 
his  prejudices  are  aroused,  until  the  consonance  of  this 
sketchy  account  of  the  basis  of  moraUty  with  Christianity 
and  all  idealism  can  be  demonstrated. 

H.  Spencer,  Data  of  Ethics,  chaps,  n,  in.  S.  E.  Mezes,  Ethics^ 
chap.  IX.  LesUe  Stephen,  Science  of  Ethics,  chaps,  n,  rx.  F.  Thilly, 
Introditction  to  Ethics,  chaps,  iv,  v.  F.  Paulsen,  bk.  ii,  chap.  i. 
J.  S.  Mill,  Utilitarianism.  B.  P.  Bowne,  Principles  of  Ethics,  chap, 
n.  The  classic  accounts  of  a  rational  foundation  of  ethics  are  to  be 
found  by  the  discerning  reader  in  Plato's  Protagoras,  Gorgias,  and 
Republic  (esp.  bks.  i,  ii,  iv),  and  Aristotle's  Ethics  (esp.  bks.  i  and 
n).  For  refinements  in  the  definition  of  right  and  wrong,  see 
G.  E.  Moore,  Ethics,  chaps,  i-v;  B.  Russell,  Philosophical  Essays, 
I,  sees,  n,  m.  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  vol.  24,  p.  293. 
Definitions  of  value  without  reference  to  pleasure  or  pain  will  be 
found  in  Journal  of  Philosophy,  PsycJwlogy,  and  Scientific  Methods, 
vol.  11,  pp.  29, 113, 141.  An  elaborate  and  careful  discussion  will  be 
found  in  G.  H.  Palmer's  Nature  of  Goodness. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

THE  MEANING  OF  DUTY 

Why  are  there  conflicts  between  duty  and  inclination? 

If  virtue  is  simply  conduct  that  makes  most  truly  for 
happiness,  why  are  not  all  but  fools  virtuous?  The  answer 
is,  in  a  word,  because  what  wiU  bring  about  the  greatest 
good  in  the  long  run,  and  to  the  most  people,  is  not  always 
what  the  individual  desires  at  the  moment.  The  two  great 
temptations  are  the  lure  of  the  selfish  and  the  lure  of  the 
immediate.  To  purchase  one's  own  happiness  at  the  expense 
of  others,  and  to  purchase  present  satisfaction  by  an  act 
which  will  bring  less  good  in  the  end  —  these  are  the  cardinal 
sins,  and  under  these  two  heads  every  specific  sin  can  be 
put.  The  root  of  the  trouble  is  that,  in  spite  of  the  super- 
position of  conscience  upon  their  primitive  impulses,  human 
organisms  have  not  yet  motor-mechanisms  fully  adjusted 
to  their  individual  or  combined  needs.  Some  instincts  are 
over-strong,  others  under-developed,  none  is  dehcately 
enough  attuned  to  the  changing  possibilities  of  the  situation. 
Our  desires  tug  toward  all  sorts  of  acts  which  would  prove 
disastrous  either  to  ourselves  or  others.  Many  of  our 
faults  we  commit  "without  realizing  it";  we  follow  our 
impulses  blindly,  unconscious  of  their  treachery.  Other  sins 
we  commit  knowingly,  because  in  spite  of  warning  voices 
we  cannot  resist  the  momentary  desire.  Readjustment  of 
our  impulses  is  always  painful;  it  is  easier  and  pleasanter  to 
yield  than  to  control. 

Duty  is  the  name  we  give  virtue  when  she  is  opposed  to 
inclination.  She  is  the  representative  at  the  helm  of  our 
conduct  of  all  absent  or  undeveloped  impulses.  The  saints 


M  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

have  no  need  of  the  concept;  virtue  to  them  is  easy  and 
agreeable;  they  have  learned  the  beauty  of  holiness  and  have 
no  unruly  longings.  Sometimes  this  happy  adjustment  of 
desire  to  need  has  been  won  by  severe  struggle;  the  danger- 
ous impulses  have  been  trained  to  come  to  heel  through 
many  a  painful  sacrifice.  In  other  cases  an  approximation 
to  this  ideal  state  is  the  result  of  early  training;  by  skillful 
guidance  the  growing  boy  or  girl  has  had  his  safe  impulses 
fostered  and  his  perilous  desires  atrophied  with  disuse.  The 
proverb,  "Bring  up  a  child  in  the  way  he  should  go,  and  when 
he  is  old  he  will  not  depart  therefrom/'  has  much  truth  in  it. 
But  no  parent  and  no  man  himself  can  ever  breathe  quite 
safe;  we  can  never  tell  when  some  submerged  animal  instinct 
will  rise  up  in  us,  stun  all  om*  laboriously  acquired  morality 
into  inactivity,  and  bring  on  consequences  that  in  any  cool- 
headed  moment  we  should  have  known  enough  to  avoid. 

Thus  duty,  although  she  is  the  truest  friend  and  servant 
of  happiness,  figures  as  her  foe.  And  some  moralists,  realiz- 
ing vividly  the  frequent  need  of  opposing  inclination,  have 
generaHzed  the  situation  by  saying  that  happiness  cannot 
be  our  end.  "FooHsh  Word-monger  and  Motive-grinder,'* 
shouts  Carlyle,  "who  in  thy  Logic-mill  hast  an  earthly 
mechanism  for  the  Godlike  itself,  and  wouldst  fain  grind  me 
out  Virtue  from  the  husks  of  Pleasure,  ...  I  tell  thee. 
Nay!  ...  Is  the  heroic  inspiration  we  name  Virtue  but 
some  Passion,  some  bubble  of  the  blood,  bubbhng  in  the 
direction  others  profit  by?  I  know  not;  only  this  I  know.  If 
what  thou  namest  Happiness  be  our  true  aim,  then  are  we 
all  astray.  .  .  .  *  Happy,'  my  brother.?  First  of  all,  what 
difference  is  it  whether  thou  art  happy  or  not !  .  .  .  *  Happi- 
ness our  being's  end  and  aim,'  all  that  very  paltry  specula- 
tion is  at  bottom,  if  we  will  count  well,  not  yet  two  centuries 
old  in  the  world."  ^ 

^  Sartor  Resartus  :  "The  Everlasting  No."  Past  and  PreserU:  "Happy.** 


THE  MEANING  OF  DUTY  85 

Leaving  aside  this  last  statement,  which  is  an  irrelevant 
untruth,  we  probably  feel  an  instinctive  sympathy  with 
Carlyle,  and  a  sort  of  shame  that  we  should  have  thought  of 
happiness  as  the  goal  of  conduct.  Carlyle  goes  so  far  in  his 
tirades  as  to  call  our  happiness-morality  a*' pig-philosophy,'* 
which  makes  the  universe  out  to  be  a  huge  ** swine's  trough" 
from  which  mankind  is  trying  to  get  the  maximum  "pigs* 
wash."  Again  he  calls  it  a  "Mechanical  Profit-and-Loss 
theory."  In  such  picturesque  language  he  embodies  a  point 
of  view  which  in  milder  terms  has  been  expressed  by  many. 

But  to  say  that  we  must  often  oppose  inchnation  in  the 
name  of  duty  is  by  no  means  to  say  that  we  must  do  what 
in  the  end  will  make  against  happiness.  The  trouble  with 
inclination  and  passion  is  precisely  that  they  are  often 
miners  of  happiness.  The  very  real  and  frequent  opposition 
of  desire  and  duty  is  no  support  of  the  view  that  duty  is 
irrelevant  to  happiness,  but  quite  consistent  with  the 
rational  account  of  morality  —  that  dates  at  least  back  to 
the  ancient  Greeks  —  which  shows  it  to  be  the  means  to 
man's  most  lasting  and  widespread  happiness. 

Must  we  deny  that  duty  is  the  servant  of  happiness? 

We  may  go  on  to  point  out  various  flaws  in  the  doctrine, 
of  which  Carlyle  is  one  of  the  extreme  representatives,  that 
the  account  of  morality  as  a  means  to  happiness  is  immoral 
and  leads  to  shocking  results. 

(1)  The  plausibility  of  the  doctrine  rests  largely  on  its 
confusion  with  the  very  different  truth  that  we  should  not 
make  happiness  our  conscious  aim.  It  is  one  of  the  surest 
fruits  of  experience  that  happiness  is  best  won  by  forgetting 
it;  he  that  loses  his  life  shall  truly  find  it.  To  think  much  of 
happiness  slides  inevitably  over  into  thinking  too  much  of 
present  happiness,  and  more  of  one's  own  than  others* 
happiness;  it  leads  to  what  Spencer  properly  dubs  "the 


86  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

pursuit  of  happiness  without  regard  to  the  conditions  by 
fulfillment  of  which  happiness  is  to  be  achieved."  Carlyle 
is  practically  on  the  right  track  in  bidding  us  think  rather 
of  duty,  of  work,  of  accomplishment.  But  that  is  far  from 
denying  that  these  aims  have  their  ultimate  justification  in 
the  happiness  they  forward.  In  order  that  remote  ends  may 
be  attained,  it  is  often  necessary  to  cease  thinking  of  them 
and  concentrate  the  mind  upon  immediate  means.  To 
acquire  unconsciousness  of  manner,  the  last  thing  to  do  is  to 
aim  directly  for  it;  to  acquire  happiness,  the  worst  procedure 
is  to  make  it  one's  conscious  quest.  Yet  in  the  former  case 
the  attainment  of  the  ease  of  manner  sought,  and  in  the 
latter  case  the  attainment  of  the  happiest  life  for  one's  self 
and  those  whom  one's  action  affects  is  the  touchstone  which 
at  bottom  determines  the  method  to  be  adopted.  The  proper 
method,  we  contend,  is  —  morality.  It  is  the  method  that 
Carlyle  recommends.  So  that  in  practice  we  agree  with  him, 
while  parting  with  him  in  theory. 

(2)  Carlyle  evidently  has  in  mind  usually  the  thought 
that  it  is  one's  own  happiness  only  that  is  put  up  as  the  end 
by  the  moralists  he  opposes.  This  was  pure  misunder- 
standing, however,  or  perversity.  Other  men's  happiness 
has  intrinsic  worth  (or  is  intrinsic  worth,  for  the  word  and 
the  phrase  are  synonymous)  as  truly  as  mine;  and  morality 
is  concerned  quite  as  much  with  guiding  the  individual 
toward  the  general  good  as  toward  his  own  ultimate  welfare. 
To  this  point  we  must  return,  merely  mentioning  here  the 
fact  that  no  reputable  moralist  now  preaches  the  selfish 
theory. 

(3)  A  part  of  Carlyle's  ammunition  consists  in  the  slurring 
connotations  which  have  grown  up  about  the  word  "pleas* 
ure,"  and  even  the  word  "happiness."  Because  of  the  prac- 
tical need  of  opposing  immediate  in  the  interests  of  remoter 
good,  the  various  words  that  designate  intrinsic  and  imme- 


THE  MEANING  OF  DUTY  Sf 

diate  value  have  come  to  have  a  less  worthy  sound  in  our 
ears  than  those  words  which  indicate  control  for  the  sake 
of  more  widespread  or  lasting  interests  —  such  as  *' pru- 
dence," "duty,"  and  *Sdrtue."  Moreover,  the  word 
"pleasures"  commonly  connotes  the  minor  goods  of  life  in 
contrast  with  the  great  joys,  such  as  the  accomplishment  of 
some  worthy  task  or  the  service  of  those  we  love.  Again,  it 
commonly  connotes  things  passively  enjoyed,  rather  than 
the  active  joys  of  life,  which  are  practically  more  important. 
So  that  to  condemn  "pleasure"  as  an  end  arouses  our 
instinctive  sympathy.  A  "pleasure"  is  any  bit  of  immediate 
good,  however  involved  with  pain,  however  transitory,  and 
dangerous  in  its  effects.  "Happiness"  generally  refers  to  a 
more  permanent  state  of  satisfaction,  including  comparative 
freedom  from  pain;  a  stable  and  assured  state  of  intrinsic 
worth,  good  to  reflection  as  well  as  to  sense.  Pleasures  are 
easy  enough  to  get,  but  this  safe  state  of  happiness,  full  of 
rich  positive  worth,  and  immune  from  pain  both  in  action 
and  in  moments  of  retrospect,  is  far  from  easy.  Hence  it  is 
better  to  use  the  word  "happiness"  for  our  goal  than  the 
word  "pleasure."  Carlyle,  however,  takes  "happiness"  in 
the  lower  sense  and  rejects  it  in  favor  of  what  he  calls  "bless* 
edness."  This  gives  him  the  advantage  of  seeming  to  have  a 
new  and  superior  theory.  But  when  we  ask  what  "blessed- 
ness" is,  it  is  apparent  that  it  can  be  nothing  but  what  we 
call  "happiness,"  or  the  living  of  life  in  such  a  way  as  to  lead 
to  happiness. 

(4)  There  is  another  important  practical  insight  under- 
lying the  protests  of  Carlyle  and  those  of  his  ilk,  namely, 
that  it  pays  to  disregard  the  minor  ills  and  discomforts  of 
life  and  keep  our  thoughts  fixed  on  the  big  things.  These 
minor  ills  do  not  matter  much  as  they  pass;  they  are  tran- 
sient, and  usually  leave  little  pain  for  reflection.  It  is  the 
fear  of  them,  the  complaining  about  them,  the  shrinking 


98  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

from  them,  the  attending  to  them,  that  constitutes  the 
greater  part  of  their  badness.  Carlyle  has  the  same  practical 
common  sense  that  the  Christian  Scientists  show;  but,  as 
in  their  case,  he  lets  his  practical  wisdom  confuse  his  theo- 
retical insight. 

Sympathize,  then,  as  we  all  must  with  these  anti-happiness 
preachers,  we  may  point  out  that  their  intuitions  are  quite 
compatible  with  a  sane  view  of  the  ultimate  meaning  of 
morality.  K  morality  does  not  exist  for  human  welfare, 
what  is  it  good  for.^*  And  what  else  can  welfare  ultimately 
be  but  happiness  ?  Other  proposed  ends  we  shall  presently 
consider.  But  the  happiness-account  of  morality  leads  to 
no  dangerous  laxity.  If  any  eudsemonistic  moralists  have 
lived  loosely,  it  was  because  they  did  not  realize  what  really 
makes  for  happiness  or  had  not  strength  of  will  to  cleave  to 
it,  not  because  they  saw  happiness  as  the  criterion.  An 
immature  perception  of  this  as  the  criterion  without  a  full 
recognition  of  its  bearings  may  have  misled  some;  it  is 
possible  to  see  a  general  truth  clearly  and  yet  evaluate 
wrongly  in  concrete  situations.  But  the  converse  of  the 
truth  that  morality  makes  for  happiness  is  the  truth  that 
the  way  to  attain  happiness  is  morality.  No  lesson  could  be 
more  salutary.  Correct  concrete  evaluations  are  more 
important  than  correct  abstract  generalizations,  and 
Carlyle  is  nearly  always  on  the  right  side  in  the  former. 
But  his  influence  would  have  been  still  more  wholesome  if 
he  had  added  to  his  sound  sermonizing  a  sane  and  clearly 
analyzed  theory. 

Does  the  end  justify  the  means? 

Our  account  of  morality  may  be  called  the  eudcomonistic 
account,  from  the  Greek  eudoomoniay  happiness,  or  the 
teleological  account,  from  teloSy  an  end.  It  asserts,  that  is, 
that  morality  is  to  be  judged  by  the  end  it  subserves;  that 


THE  MEANING  OF  DUTY  89 

end  is  happiness.  We  have  seen  the  sort  of  protest  that  arises 
with  respect  to  the  word  "happiness.'*  We  may  now  note 
a  danger  that  arises  from  the  use  of  the  concept  "end";  it 
finds  expression  in  the  familiar  proverb,  "The  end  justifies 
the  means."  Conduct  is  to  be  judged  by  the  end  it  sub- 
serves; therefore,  if  the  end  is  good  any  means  may  be  used 
to  attain  it.  This  has  been  the  defense  of  much  wrongdoing. 
The  Jesuits  who  Hed,  slandered,  cheated,  and  murdered, 
to  promote  the  interests  of  the  Church,  the  McNamara 
brothers,  who  dynamited  buildings  and  bridges  as  a  means 
toward  the  final  end  of  attaining  for  laborers  a  just  share 
of  the  fruits  of  their  labor,  the  suffragettes  who  have  been 
burning  private  houses,  sticking  up  mail-boxes,  and  break- 
ing windows,  have  justified  their  crimes  by  reference  to  the 
great  ends  they  expected  thereby  to  attain.  What  shall  we 
say  to  this  plea? 

(1)  The  motto  means:  Conduct  in  itself  undesirable  may 
be  justified  if  the  end  attained  is  important  enough  to  war- 
rant it.  In  every  case,  then,  the  question  must  arise:  Is  the 
end  to  be  attained  worth  the  cost?  To  justify  means  that 
are  intrinsically  bad,  it  must  be  shown  that  the  end  attained 
is  so  good  as  to  overbalance  this  evil.  Was  the  advancement 
of  the  Church  worth  the  cost  in  human  suffering,  estrange- 
ment, and  bitterness  that  the  Jesuits  exacted?  Is  the 
advancement  of  labor  interests  worth  the  destruction  of 
property  and  life,  the  fostering  of  class-enmity  and  of  moral 
anarchism  that  the  criminal  wing  of  the  I.  W.  W.  stands  for? 
Are  votes  for  women  worth  the  similar  evils  which  British 
suffragettes  are  drifting  into?  Sometimes  a  cause  is  so 
important  that  almost  any  act  is  justified  in  its  advance- 
ment. But  such  cases  are  rare,  at  least  in  modem  life. 
Always  there  must  be  a  balancing  of  good  and  evil.  And  the 
trouble  with  the  attitude  of  mind  which  we  have  illustrated 
is  that  the  end  sought  is  usually  not  so  all  important  as  to 


90  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

warrant  the  grave  evils  which  its  seekers  cause.  When  the 
Titanic  was  sinking,  the  boat's  oflficers  shot  several  men 
who  tried  to  jump  into  the  lifeboats  ahead  of  the  women  and 
children.  It  was  probably  the  only  way  to  stop  a  mad  panic- 
stricken  rush,  which  would  have  endangered  the  lives  of  all 
as  well  as  broken  the  chivalrous  code  which  is  worth  so 
much  sacrifice.  The  evil  of  shooting  down  unarmed  and 
frightened  men  was  great;  but  it  was  undoubtedly  justified 
by  the  end  attained.  Whether  any  of  the  other  instances 
mentioned  are  cases  where  the  evil  done  would  be  similarly 
justified  by  the  end,  if  thereby  attained,  we  shall  not  here 
discuss.  But  the  principle  is  evident.  The  end  justifies  eviJ 
means  only  if  it  is  so  supremely  good  as  to  overbalance  that 
evil. 

(2)  It  is  pertinent,  however,  to  add  two  considerations. 
First,  we  must  feel  sure  that  no  less  harmful  means  are 
available.   And  secondly,  we  must  feel  sure  that  these  evil 
means  are  really  adapted  to  attain  the  purpose.  Is  there  no 
other  way  of  securing  votes  for  women  than  by  the  hysterical 
and  criminal  pranks  our  British  sisters  have  been  playing? 
And  will  those  irritating  acts  actually  forward  their  cause, 
or  tend  to  bring  about  a  revulsion  of  feeling?  Did  the  crimes 
of  the  Jesuits  make  the  Church  triumphant?    Not  in  the 
long  run.  Immediate  gains  may  often  be  won  by  unpleasant 
methods,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Titanic.  But  when  the  struggle 
is  bound  to  be  a  long  one,  as  in  the  case  of  woman's  suffrage 
and  industrial  justice,   methods  which   (not  to  beg  the 
question)  would  ordinarily  be  criminal  are  seldom  in  the  end 
advantageous.    The  McNamara   case  hurt  the   I.  W.  W. 
sorely.    Suffrage  legislation  has  possibly  been  retarded  in 
Britain.   And  in  both  cases  there  are  probal:>ly  more  effica- 
cious, as  well  as  less  harmful,  ways  of  attaining  the  desired 
end. 

(3)  It  is  strictly  true  that  the  end,  human  welfare,  justi- 


THE  MEANING  OF  DUTY  gS 

fies  any  means  necessary  to  attain  it.  Whatever  pain  must 
be  caused  to  bring  about  the  greatest  possible  human 
happiness  is  thereby  exempt  from  reprobation.  Whatever 
conduct  is  necessary  for  that  supreme  end  becomes  morality, 
or  virtue;  for  that  is  precisely  what  morality  is.  For  example, 
it  is  undoubtedly  necessary  at  times  to  murder,  to  steal,  and 
to  lie  for  the  sake  of  human  welfare;  in  such  cases  these  acts 
are  universally  approved.  Only,  we  give  the  acts  in  such 
cases  new  names,  that  the  words  "murder,"  etc.,  may 
retain  their  air  of  reprobation.  We  call  murder  of  which  we 
approve  "capital  punishment"  or  "justifiable  homicide"  oi 
"patriotic  courage."  If  taking  a  man's  property  without  his 
consent  is  steahng,  then  the  State  steals;  but,  approving 
the  act,  we  call  it  "eminent  domain." 

(4)  The  motto  has  its  chief  danger,  perhaps,  in  the  ten- 
dency it  encourages  to  ignore  remoter  consequences  for  the 
sake  of  immediate  gain.  This  point  we  will  consider  under 
the  following  topic. 

What  is  the  justification  of  justice  and  chivalry? 

If  the  greatest  total  of  human  happiness  is  the  supreme 
end  of  conduct,  was  not  Caiaphas  right  in  deeming  it  expedi- 
ent that  one  man  should  die  for  the  people,  even  though  he 
were  innocent  of  all  sin?  Were  not  the  French  army  officers 
sane  in  preferring  to  make  Dreyfus  their  scapegoat  rather 
than  bring  dishonor  and  shame  upon  their  army?  For  that 
matter,  does  not  the  aggregate  of  enjoyment  of  a  score  of 
cannibals  outweigh  the  suffering  of  the  one  man  whom  they 
have  sacrificed  to  their  appetite,  or  the  dehrious  excitement 
with  which  a  brutal  crowd  witnesses  a  lynching  overbalance 
the  pain  of  their  soUtary  victim?  Yet  our  souls  revolt  against 
such  things.  We  cry,  ruai  ccelum^  fiat  justitia!  Justice  is 
prior  to  all  expediency !  Is  this  irrational,  or  can  it  be  shown 
to  be  teleologically  justifiable? 


92  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

Justice  is  undoubtedly  justifiable;  and  the  only  reason 
that  we  ever  hesitate  to  acknowledge  it  in  any  concrete  case 
is  that  we  tend  to  overlook  indirect  and  remote  results  and 
see  only  the  immediate  effect  of  action.  The  harm  done  by 
injustice  consists  not  merely  in  the  pain  inflicted  upon  the 
victim.  There  is  the  sympathetic  pain  caused  in  all  those 
who  are  at  all  tender-hearted.  There  is  the  sense  of  inse- 
curity caused  in  each  by  the  realization  that  he  too  might 
some  day  be  a  victim;  when  justice  is  not  enforced  no  man 
is  safe.  There  is  the  stimulation  given  to  human  passions  by 
one  indulgence  which  will  breed  a  whole  crop  of  pain.  There 
is  the  danger  that  if  injustice  is  allowed  in  one  case  where 
a  great  good  seems  to  warrant  it,  it  will  be  practised  in  other 
cases  where  no  such  necessity  exists.  Men  are  not  to  be 
trusted  to  judge  clearly  of  relative  advantages  where  their 
passions  are  concerned;  they  must  bind  themselves  by  an 
inflexible  code. 

The  cases  cited  are  comparatively  clear.  No  one  would 
seriously  contend  that  cannibalism  or  lynching,  the  execu- 
tion of  Christ,  or  the  banishment  of  Dreyfus,  made  in  the 
direction  of  the  greatest  happiness  of  mankind.  But  it  has 
been  seriously  urged  that  the  insane  and  the  feeble  and  the 
morally  worthless  should  be  killed  off,  as  they  were  in  some 
sterner  ancient  states.  Why  should  we  guarantee  life  and 
liberty  to  such  as  are  a  useless  drag  upon  the  community, 
spend  upon  them  millions  which  might  be  spent  for  bringing 
joy  and  recreation  to  the  rest  of  us?  Or  again,  if  medical  men 
need  a  living  human  victim  to  experiment  upon,  in  order  to 
conquer  some  devastating  disease,  why  not  pounce  upon 
some  good-for-nothing  member  of  the  community  and  force 
him  to  undergo  the  pain.'^  The  considerations  enumerated 
in  the  preceding  paragraph,  however,  bid  us  halt.  Imagine 
the  anxiety  and  the  anguish  that  would  be  caused  if  some 
commission  were  free  to  determine  who  were  insane  or  feeble 


THE  MEANING  OF  DUTY  93 

or  worthless  enough  to  be  put  out  of  the  way!  Or  free  to 
select  a  human  victim  for  vivisection  whenever  experts 
deemed  it  wise!  The  widespread  horror  and  uneasiness  of 
such  a  regime,  the  callousness  to  suffering  it  would  engender, 
the  private  revenges  and  crimes  that  might  insidiously 
creep  in  under  the  guise  of  pubUc  good,  are  alone  enough  to 
render  vicious  such  a  procedure. 

It  is  true  that  one  person's  suffering  is  less  of  an  evil  than 
the  suffering  of  many.  The  State,  by  universal  consent, 
inflicts  undeserved  suffering  upon  individuals  when  the 
social  welfare  seems  to  require  it;  as  when  it  takes  away  a 
man's  beloved  acre  to  built  a  railroad  or  highway,  or  when 
it  compels  vaccination,  or  when  it  drafts  soldiers  for  the 
national  defense  and  sends  them  to  their  death.  When  a 
man  volunteers  to  risk  his  life  or  to  endure  pain  for  his 
fellows  we  rightly  applaud  his  act.  In  such  a  case  the  ill 
effects  above  mentioned  do  not  follow,  and  the  gain  is 
clear;  in  addition,  the  stimulating  value  of  the  voluntary 
self-sacrifice  is  great.  The  American  soldiers  who  risked 
their  lives  to  rid  Cuba  and  the  world  of  yellow  fever,  by 
offering  themselves  for  inoculation  with  the  disease,  stand 
among  the  world's  heroes. 

It  is  also  true  that  "rights"  are  not  primitive  and  tran- 
scendent; their  existence  rests  upon  purely  utilitarian 
grounds.  The  right  to  liberty  and  life  is  limited  by  the 
community's  welfare.  So  is  the  right  to  property.  But  in 
estimating  advantage  we  must  beware  of  a  superficial  calcu- 
lation. The  concept  of  justice,  and  the  enthusiasm  for  it, 
have  been  of  enormous  value  to  man's  happiness.  It  is  of 
extreme  importance,  from  a  eudsemonistic  standpoint,  to 
cherish  that  ideal.  Even  if  in  some  individual  case  a  greater 
general  happiness  would  result  from  infringing  upon  it,  we 
cannot  afford  to  do  so;  we  should  find  ourselves  lapsing  into 
less  advantageous  habits  and  incurring  unforeseen  penalties. 


M  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

Chivalry  is  in  like  case  with  justice.  It  might  have  seemed 
better  for  the  world  that  the  able  and  distinguished  men 
should  have  been  saved  from  the  Titanic  —  some  of  them 
v/ere  men  of  considerable  importance  in  various  Hues  of 
work  —  rather  than  less-needed  women.  But  the  effect  of 
the  noble  example  in  strengthening  the  will  to  sacrifice  self 
for  others,  and  in  maintaining  our  beautiful  devotion  to 
woman,  was  worth  the  cost.  Fox  was  right  when  he  said, 
"Example  avails  ten  times  more  than  precept."  Even  if 
the  loss  had  been  greater  than  it  was,  it  would  have  been 
better  to  incur  it  than  to  allow  an  exception  to  the  code  of 
chivalry.  Such  codes  are  formed  with  infinite  pains  and  are 
very  easily  shattered;  a  little  laxity  here,  a  tolerated  excep- 
tion there,  and  the  selfishness  and  passions  of  men  rise  to 
the  surface  and  undo  the  work  of  years.  At  all  costs  we  must 
maintain  the  code.  In  the  end  it  pays.  The  greatest  genius 
must  run  the  risk  of  drowning  in  the  endeavor  to  save  the 
life  of  some  unknown  person  who  may  be  a  worthless  scamp. 
He  may  die  and  the  scamp  live,  a  great  loss  to  the  world. 
But  only  so  can  the  code  of  honor  be  maintained  which  in 
the  long  run  adds  so  much  positive  joy  to  man  and  saves 
him  from  so  much  pain. 

In  most  instances,  though  not  in  some  of  those  cited,  the 
reward  of  justice  and  chivalry  is  sufficient  for  the  individual 
himself.  As  Socrates  said  to  Theodorus,^  "The  penalty  of 
injustice  .  .  .  cannot  be  escaped.  .  .  .  They  do  not  see,  in 
their  infatuation,  that  they  are  growing  Hke  the  one  and 
unlike  the  other,  by  reason  of  their  evil  deeds;  and  the  pen- 
alty is,  that  they  lead  a  life  answering  to  the  pattern  which 
they  resemble.'*  "On  the  other  hand,"  —  to  supplement 
Plato  with  Emerson, 2  —  "the  hero  fears  not  that  if  he  with* 

1  Plato,  ThecBtetus,  176. 

'  Essays,  First  Scries:  "Spiritual  Laws."   Cf.  George  Eliot,  in  Romolax  , 

•*The  coutumiuatiug  effect  of  deeds  often  lies  less  in  the  commission  than         1 


THE  MEANING  OF  DUTY  95 

hold  the  avowal  of  a  just  and  brave  act,  it  will  go  unwit- 
nessed and  unloved.  One  knows  it  —  himself  —  and  is 
pledged  by  it  to  sweetness  of  peace  and  to  nobleness  of  ainu 
which  will  prove  in  the  end  a  better  proclamation  of  it  than 
the  relating  of  the  incident."  And,  we  may  add,  a  greater 
joy. 

But  even  in  view  of  the  cases  where  no  apparent  compen- 
sation comes  to  the  individual,  the  ideals  of  justice  and 
chivalry,  like  the  more  general  concept  of  duty,  are  among 
the  most  valuable  possessions  of  man's  fashioning.  Cross 
our  inclinations  as  they  often  do,  cost  dearly  as  they  some- 
times will,  the  habit  of  unquestioning  allegiance  to  them 
is  one  of  the  greatest  of  all  gains  as  means  to  the  attainment 
by  mankind  of  a  stable  and  assured  happiness. 

A  brief  discussion  of  the  conflict  of  duty  and  inclination  will  be 
found  in  Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics,  chap,  xvii,  first  few  pages. 
Carlyle's  declamations  against  happiness  are  too  scattered  and 
unsystematic  to  make  reference  to  specific  chapters  useful.  The 
general  point  of  view  may  be  found,  more  temperately  stated,  in 
F.  H.  Bradley's  Ethical  Studies,  the  chapter  entitled  "  Why  Should  I 
be  Moral?  "  Contemporary  accounts  of  the  nature  of  obligation  will 
be  found  in  the  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  vol.  22,  p.  282; 
vol.  23,  pp.  143,  323. 

A  discussion  of  the  motto,  "The  end  justifies  the  means,"  will 
be  found  in  F.  Paulsen's  System  of  Ethics,  bk.  ii,  chap,  i,  sec.  4.  The 
justification  of  justice  is  treated  in  J.  S.  Mill's  Utilitarianism,  chap.  v. 

in  the  consequent  adjustment  of  our  desires,  the  enlistment  of  our  self- 
interest  on  the  side  of  falsity.  The  purifying  influence  of  public  confession 
springs  from  the  fact  that  by  it  the  hope  in  lies  is  forever  swept  away,  and 
the  soul  recovers  the  noble  attitude  of  simplicity." 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  JUDGMENT  OF  CHARACTER 

Wherein  consists  goodness  of  character? 

Character  is  the  sum  of  a  man's  tendencies  to  conduct. 
Our  estimate  of  a  man's  character  is  a  sort  of  weather  fore- 
cast of  what  he  will  do  in  various  situations.  Goodness  of 
character  consists,  then,  of  such  an  organization  of  impulses 
as  will  lead  to  good  acts  —  to  acts  productive  ultimately  of 
a  preponderance  of  intrinsic  good,  or  happiness.  The  blame 
and  approval  that  attaches  in  our  minds  to  certain  acts 
becomes  attached  also  to  the  disposition  that  is  fruitful  of 
such  acts.  A  good  man  is  he  whose  mind  is  so  set  and 
adjusted  that  it  will  turn  away  from  evil  deeds  and  espouse 
the  right.  We  can  say,  then,  with  Dewey  and  Tufts,  "Good- 
ness consists  in  active  interest  in  those  things  which  really 
bring  happiness."^  Similarly,  Paulsen  writes,  "Virtues  may 
be  defined  as  habits  of  the  will  and  modes  of  conduct  which 
tend  to  promote  the  welfare  of  individual  and  collective 
life.  "2  And  Santayana  puts  it  more  tersely  in  the  statement, 
"  Goodness  is  that  disposition  that  is  fruitful  in  happiness."  ^ 

It  is  easy,  then,  to  understand  the  enthusiasm  that  men 
feel  for  goodness;  it  is  the  resultant  of  the  passionate  longing 
to  be  delivered  from  the  domination  of  evil  impulses,  the 
instinctive  joy  in  splendid  and  unselfish  acts,  the  sense  of 
relief  and  gratitude  felt  toward  those  from  whom  one  has 
nothing  to  fear.  Contrariwise,  the  shrinking  from  a  bad 
man  springs  primarily  from  the  dread  of  what  he  may  do^ 

1  FAhks,  p.  396.  »  System  of  Ethics,  Eng.  tr.,  p.  475. 

^  Reason  in  Common  Sense,  p.  144. 


THE  JUDGMENT  OF  CHARACTER  97 

from  the  disgust  which  the  sight  of  his  fooHsh  and  ruinous 
acts  inspires  —  and  from  various  other  reactions  of  the  spec- 
tator which  we  need  not  enumerate.  If  character  were  a 
sort  of  merely  inward  possession,  unconnected  with  conduct, 
we  should  not  feel  thus  toward  it.  Merely  to  feel  virtuous  i* 
pleasant,  but  it  is  not  important.  Imputed  goodness  must 
be  judged  by  the  kind  of  conduct  it  yields,  and  that  conduct 
in  turn  by  its  consequences.  "By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know 
them." 

But  this  inward  disposition,  though  important  chiefly  for 
its  effects,  is  more  important  therefor  than  we  are  apt  to 
reaHze.  "As  a  man  thinketh  in  his  heart,  so  he  is."  The 
scientific  study  of  psychology  has  emphasized  the  fact, 
which  is  open  to  everyday  observation,  that  even  secret 
thoughts  and  moods  influence  inevitably  a  man's  outward 
acts.  What  we  do  depends  upon  what  we  have  been  think- 
ing and  imagining  and  feeling.  The  Great  Teacher  was  right 
when  he  bade  men  refrain  not  merely  from  murder,  but  from 
angry  thoughts;  not  merely  from  adultery,  but  from  lustful 
glances;  not  merely  from  perjury,  but  from  the  desire  to 
deceive.  Epictetus  puts  it,  "What  we  ought  not  to  do  we 
should  not  even  think  of  doing."  And  Marcus  Aurelius 
writes,  "We  should  accustom  ourselves  to  think  upon 
nothing  that  we  should  hesitate  to  reveal  to  others  if  they 
asked  to  know  it."  This  is  sound  advice.  Without  attempt- 
ing to  settle  the  problem  of  determinism  or  indeterminism, 
which  falls  properly  within  the  sphere  of  natural  rather  than 
of  moral  philosophy,  it  is  evident  that  our  conduct  is  largely 
the  result  of  that  set  of  potentialities  which  we  call  character, 
that  our  happiness  is  in  great  degree  shaped  by  our  inward 
mental  states. 

Hence  the  large  role  of  "motive"  and  "intent"  in  ethical 
theory.  High  motives  and  good  intentions  lead  sometimes 
to  disastrous  acts  —  we  know  what  place  is  paved  therewith. 


98  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

We  need  the  wisdom  of  the  serpent  as  well  as  the  innocence 
of  the  dove.  But  other  things  being  equal,  pm-e  desires  tend 
to  right  conduct.  A  man  whose  mind  dwells  upon  the  good 
side  of  his  neighbors,  who  loves  and  sympathizes,  and 
enjoys  their  friendship,  will  be  far  less  likely  to  give  vent  to 
acts  of  cruelty  or  malice  than  one  who  indulges  in  spiteful 
feelings,  fault-finding,  and  resentment.  Our  habitual 
thoughts  and  desires  make  us  responsive  to  certain  stimuli 
and  indifferent  to  others.  The  words  of  our  mouth  and  the 
meditations  of  our  heart,  as  well  as  the  trifling  acts  that  we 
perform,  in  themselves  however  unimportant,  have  their 
subtle  and  accumulative  influence  in  determining  our 
momentous  acts.  The  familiar  case  of  the  drinker  who  says, 
"This  glass  does  n*t  count,'*  can  be  paralleled  in  every  field 
of  life.  It  pays  to  keep  in  moral  training,  to  cultivate  kindly 
and  disciplined  thoughts,  to  forbid  ill-natured  and  unworthy 
feelings,  and  self-indulgent  dreams.  Otherwise  before  we 
know  it  the  barriers  of  resistance  will  crumble  and  we  shall 
do  what  we  had  never  supposed  we  should  do,  some  act 
that  is  the  fruit  of  our  unregulated  inner  life.^ 

Can  we  say,  with  Kant,  that  the  only  good  is  the  Good  Will? 
It  is  not  uncommon  for  instrumental  goods  to  come  to 
receive  a  homage  greater  than  that  which  is  paid  to  the 
ends  they  serve.  It  is  notably  and  necessarily  so  with  the 
various  aspects  of  the  concept  of  morality;  virtue,  conscience, 
goodness  of  character  are  actually  more  important  for  us  to 
think  about  and  aim  for  than  the  happiness  to  which  they 
ultimately  minister.   But  this  apotheosis  of  goodness  leads 

1  Cf.  George  Eliot  in  Romola:  "Tito"  (who,  having  posed  as  a  rich  and 
noble  gentleman,  being  unexpectedly  confronted  with  his  plebeian  father, 
on  the  spur  of  the  moment  disowned  him  with  the  merciless  words,  "Some 
madman,  surely!")  "was  experiencing  that  inexorable  law  of  human  souls, 
that  we  prepare  ourselves  for  sudden  deeds  by  the  reiterated  choice  of  good 
or  evil  that  gradually  determines  character." 


THE  JUDGMENT  OF  CHARACTER  99 

at  times  to  a  denial  of  its  fundamentally  instrumental  value. 
As  with  the  miser  who  rates  his  bank-notes  more  highly 
than  the  goods  he  could  purchase  with  them,  an  abstract 
moralist  occasionally  exalts  the  means  at  the  expense  of  the 
end.  We  are  told  that  only  goodness  counts;  that  its  worth 
has  nothing  to  do  with  its  relation  to  happiness;  that  good- 
ness would  command  our  allegiance  even  if  it  brought 
nothing  but  misery  in  its  train. 

The  best-known  exponent  of  this  blind  worship  of  good- 
ness is  Kant.  He  writes,  "A  Good  Will  is  good,  not  because 
of  what  it  performs  or  effects,  not  by  its  aptness  for  the 
attainment  of  some  proposed  end,  but  simply  by  virtue  of 
the  volition;  that  is,  it  is  good  in  itself.  ...  Its  fruitfulness 
or  fruitlessness  can  neither  add  nor  take  away  anything 
from  this  value.  .  .  .  Moral  worth  .  .  .  cannot  lie  any- 
where but  in  the  principle  of  the  Will,  without  regard  to  the 
ends  which  can  be  attained  by  the  action."  ^ 

So  far  does  Kant  carry  this  worship  of  the  idea  of  goodness 
that  he  separates  it  from  the  several  virtues  that  make  up 
goodness  in  the  concrete  and  bows  down  before  the  re- 
sulting bare  abstraction  Good  Will,  the  will  to  do  good.  This 
leads  him  to  a  curiously  dehumanized  position.  Prudential 
acts,  he  declares,  are  obviously  good  in  their  consequences; 
they  therefore  deserve  no  praise;  whatever  one  does  calcu- 
latingly, with  view  to  future  results,  has  no  moral  worth. 
And  on  the  other  hand,  whatever  good  acts  one  does  in- 
stinctively, pushed  on  by  animal  impulses,  including  love 
and  sympathy,  deserve  no  praise  and  have  no  moral  worth. 
It  is  only  what  one  does  from  the  single  motive  of  desiring 
to  do  the  right  that  awakens  Kant's  enthusiasm.  "The 
preservation  of  one's  own  life,  for  instance,  is  a  duty;  but, 
as  every  one  has  a  natural  inclination  to  preserve  his  life, 

*  The  Metaphysic  of  Morality.  To  be  found  in  Kant's  Theory  of  Ethicst 
tr.  by  Abbott,  pp.  10,  16. 


100  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

the  anxious  care  which  most  men  usually  devote  to  this 
object  has  no  intrinsic  value,  nor  the  maxim  from  which 
they  act  any  moral  import."  ^ 

What  shall  we  say  to  this? 

(1)  Kant's  statements  are  a  mere  crystallization  of  an  un- 
analyzed  feeling;  their  plausibility  rests  upon  our  ingrained 
enthusiasm  for  goodness.  But  if  that  enthusiasm  be  chal- 
lenged, how  shall  we  justify  it?  Plow  do  we  know  that  good 
will  is  good,  unless  we  can  see  why  it  is  good?  Many  other 
things  appeal  to  our  instincts  as  good;  may  not  this  partic- 
ular judgment  be  mistaken,  or  may  not  all  these  other 
things  be  equally  good  with  good  will?  Kant's  Hebraic 
training  is  clearly  revealed  in  his  exaltation  of  good  will;  it 
reflects  the  practical  Lehensweisheit  we  have  learned  from  the 
Bible.  To  the  Greek  it  would  have  been  foolishness,  fanati- 
cism. We  want  not  only  good  will,  but  wisdom,  sympathy, 
skill,  common  sense.  Also  we  want  health,  love,  wives  and 
children,  friends,  and  congenial  w^ork.  All  of  these  things 
are  part  of  the  worth  of  life.  What  w^ould  it  profit  us  if  we 
lost  all  these  and  had  only  our  good  will!^  The  valuation 
that  ignores  all  natural  goods  but  one  is  unreal,  inhuman, 
fanatical;  it  leads  when  unchecked  to  the  emasculated  life 
of  the  anaemic  mediaeval  saint  or  anchorite.  Kant's  eloquent 
eulogy  of  good  will  appeals  to  one  of  our  noblest  impulses; 
but  that  impulse  is  as  much  in  need  of  justification  to  the 
reason  as  any  other,  and  it  is  only  one  of  a  number  of  equally 
healthy  and  justifiable  natural  preferences.    Good  will,  the 

*  The  Mdaphysic  of  Morality,  sec.  i. 

'  A  reductio  ad  abmrdum  of  the  Kantian  view  may  be  found  in  Candinal 
Newman's  statement  of  the  Catholic  Christian  view.  "  The  Church  holds 
that  it  were  better  for  sun  and  moon  to  drop  from  heaven,  for  the  earth  to 
fall,  and  for  all  the  many  millions  who  are  upon  it  to  die  of  stan-ation  in 
extremest  agony,  so  far  as  temporal  affliction  goes,  than  that  one  soul,  I  will 
not  say  should  be  lost,  but  should  commit  one  single  venial  sin,  should  tell 
one  willful  untruth,  though  it  harmed  no  one,  or  steal  one  poor  farthing 
without  excuse."   {Anglican  DiJJlculties,  p.  190.) 


THE  JUDGMENT  OF  CHARACTER  101 

desire  to  do  right,  is  perhaps,  on  the  whole,  in  the  emergency, 
a  safer  guide  to  trust  than  warm-blooded  impulse  or  reasoned 
calculation.  Moreover,  it  has  a  thin,  precarious  existence 
in  most  of  us  at  best,  and  needs  all  the  encouragement  it 
can  get.  Practically,  we  need  Kant's  kind  of  sermonizing; 
we  need  to  exalt  abstract  goodness  and  resist  the  appeal  of 
immediate  and  sensuous  goods.  So  Kant  has  been  popular 
with  earnest  men  more  interested  in  right  living  than  in 
theory.   But  as  a  theorist  he  is  hopelessly  inadequate. 

(2)  It  is  true  that  we  admire  good  will  without  considera- 
tion of  the  effects  it  produces,  and  even  when  it  leads  to 
disaster.  But  if  good  will  usually  led  to  disaster  we  should 
never  have  come  to  admire  it.  Chance  enters  into  this 
world's  happenings  and  often  upsets  the  normal  tendencies 
of  acts.  But  we  have  to  act  in  ways  that  may  normally  be 
expected  to  produce  good  results.  And  we  have  to  admire 
and  cherish  that  sort  of  action,  in  spite  of  the  margin  of  loss. 
The  admiration  that  we  have  come  to  feel  for  goodness  is 
partly  the  result  of  social  tradition,  buttressing  the  code 
that  in  the  long  run  works  out  to  best  advantage;  and 
partly,  of  course,  the  spontaneous  emotion  that  rises  in  us 
at  the  sight  of  courage,  heroism,  self-sacrifice,  and  the  other 
spectacular  virtues.  But  however  naive  or  sophisticated  a 
reaction  it  may  be,  its  psychogenesis  is  perfectly  intelligible, 
and  its  existence  is  no  proof  of  the  supernal  nature  of  the 
goodness  of  "good  will." 

(3)  Kant  argues  as  follows:  "Nothing  can  possibly  be 
conceived,  in  the  world  or  out  of  it,  which  can  be  called  good 
unthout  qualification y  except  a  good  will."  ^  He  goes  on  to 
show  that  wit,  courage,  perseverance,  etc.,  are  all  bad  if  the 
will  that  makes  use  of  them  is  bad  —  as  in  the  case  of  a 
criminal;  while  health,  riches,  honor,  etc.,  may  inspire  pride 
or  presumption,  and  so  not  be  unmitigated  goods.    Good 

*  Op,  cii.f  sec.  i. 


102  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

will,  then,  is  the  one  thing  that  can  in  every  case  be  called 
good. 

But  is  this  so?  May  not  a  man  have  good  will  and  yet  do 
much  mischief?  If  courage,  wit,  etc.,  need  to  be  employed 
by  good  will,  so  does  good  will  need  to  be  joined  with  com- 
mon sense,  knowledge,  tact,  and  many  other  helpers.  Good 
will  is  good  only  if  it  is  sanely  and  wisely  directed;  else  it 
may  go  with  all  sorts  of  fanaticism.  If  one  says,  "It  is  stilil 
good  qua  good  will,"  we  may  reply,  "Yes,  but  so  are  all 
goods;  courage  is  always  good  qua  courage,  knowledge  qua 
knowledge,"  etc.  All  harmless  joys  are  good  without  quali- 
fication, and  all  goods  whatever  are  good  except  as  they 
get  in  the  way  of  some  greater  good  or  lead  to  trouble. 

(4)  Kant's  formula  "good  will"  is  ambiguous.  Of  course 
a  good  act  of  will  is  good;  that  is  a  mere  tautology,  and  gives 
us  no  guidance  whatever.  Which  acts  of  will  are  good  is  our 
problem.  Kant,  however,  worked  out  his  empty  formula 
into  a  concrete  maxim,  "Act  as  if  the  maxim  of  thy  action 
were  to  become  by  thy  will  a  universal  law  of  nature."  But 
how  should  we  vnsh  others  to  act  in  the  given  situation?  It 
would  be  quite  possible  for  a  lustful  man  to  be  willing  that 
unrestrained  lust  should  be  the  general  rule;  he  would  be 
much  more  comfortable  and  freer  if  it  were.  There  is  nothing 
in  the  law  of  consistency  to  direct  him;  men  might  be  con- 
sistently bad  as  well  as  consistently  good.  We  have  still  no 
criterion,  only  an  appeal  to  coolness,  to  detachment  from 
hot  impulses  and  selfishness. 

Practically,  what  the  Kantian  viewpoint  amounts  to  m 
an  exaltation  of  conscience  —  a  much  more  concrete  (and 
variable)  thing  than  this  abstract  formula.  Do  your  duty, 
at  any  cost!  Our  hearts  respond  to  such  preaching,  but  our 
intellects  remain  perplexed,  if  the  practical  apotheosis  of 
goodness  is  not  supplemented  by  an  adequate  theoretie 
justification  thereof. 


THE  JUDGMENT  OF  CHARACTER  103 

What  evils  may  go  with  conscientiousness? 

At  this  point  it  may  repay  us  to  note  more  carefully  the 
inadequacy  of  that  mere  blind  conscientiousness  which  is 
the  practical  burden  of  the  Kantian  teaching.  One  would 
think  that  the  only  source  of  our  troubles  lay  in  our  lack  of 
desire  to  do  right !  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  a  vast  amount 
of  good  will  in  the  world  which  effects  no  good,  or  does  serious 
harm,  for  want  of  wise  direction.  Much  of  the  tragedy  of 
life  consists  of  the  clashes  between  wills  equally  consecrated 
and  pure.  Conscientious  cranks  and  blunderers  are  perhaps 
even  more  of  a  nuisance  than  out-and-out  villains ;  they  hurt 
every  good  cause  they  espouse  and  bring  noble  ideals  into 
ridicule;  they  provoke  discouragement  and  cynicism.  There 
is  hardly  a  folly  or  a  crime  that  has  not  been  committed 
prayerfully  and  with  a  clear  conscience;  the  saint  and  the 
criminal  are  sometimes  psychologically  indistinguishable  — 
indeed,  by  which  name  w^e  call  a  fanatic  may  depend  upon 
which  side  we  are  on.  We  may  discriminate  among  the 
types  of  perverted  conscience:  — 

(1)  The  fanatical  conscience,  the  meddling  conscience, 
that  feels  a  mission  to  stir  up  trouble.  Under  this  head  come 
the  parents  who  interfere  needlessly  with  their  children's 
ways  when  different  from  their  own,  the  breakers-up  of 
love-affairs,  the  fault-finders,  the  militantly  religious,  all 
that  great  multitude  of  men  who  with  prayer  and  tears  have 
felt  it  their  duty  to  override  others'  wills  and  impose  their 
codes  upon  the  world. 

(2)  The  obstructive  conscience,  that  has  become  set  and 
will  not  suffer  change.  Here  we  can  put  all  the  earnest 
"stand-patters,"  who  resist  innovation  of  every  sort.  Slaves 
of  the  particular  standards  that  they  happen  to  have 
grown  up  in,  unable  to  conceive  that  their  individual  brand 
of  religion  may  not  be  the  ultimate  truth,  horror-struck  at 


104  TIIE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

the  suggestion  that  we  should  forsake  the  ways  of  oui 
fathers,  their  conscientious  conservatism  stands  like  a  rock 
in  the  way  of  progress. 

(3)  The  ascetic  conscience,  that  overemphasizes  the  need 
of  sacrifice,  and  deletes  all  the  positive  joy  of  life  for  the  sake 
of  freedom  from  possible  pain.  This  particular  misdirection 
of  conscience  is  not  prominent  in  contemporary  life;  but  at 
certain  periods,  as  among  some  of  the  mediaeval  saints,  or 
the  early  Piu-itans,  this  hypertrophy  of  conscience  has  been 
a  serious  bhght. 

(4)  The  anxious  conscience,  that  magnifies  trifles  and 
gives  us  no  rest  with  its  incessant  suggestions,  lest  we  forget, 
lest  we  forget.  This  type  of  overconscientiousness  is  a  form 
of  unhealthy  self<;onsciousness,  a  bane  to  its  possessor  and 
a  nuisance  to  every  one  within  range. 

These  familiar  evils  that  may  go  with  the  utmost  good 
will  show  us  that  good  will  or  conscientiousness  is  not 
enough.  The  conscientious  man  may  not  only  leave  undone 
important  duties;  his  good  will  may  lead  him  to  push  in 
exactly  the  wrong  direction  and  do  great  harm.  There  are 
thus  two  ways  of  judging  a  man.  First,  did  he  do  the  best 
he  knew?  Did  he  live  up  to  his  conscience.'^  Secondly,  did 
he  do  what  was  really  best?  Was  his  conscience  properly 
developed  and  directed?  Our  approval  must  often  be  divided ; 
we  may  rate  him  high  by  the  standard  of  conscientiousnesfl, 
but  low  in  his  standard  of  morality.  This  is  the  familiar 
distinction  between  what  is  objectively  right  and  what  is 
subjectively  right.  An  objectively  right  action  is  "one  such 
that,  if  it  be  done,  the  total  value  of  the  universe  will  be 
at  least  as  great  as  if  any  other  possible  alternative  had 
been  done  by  the  agent";  whereas  "it  is  subjectively  right 
for  the  agent  to  do  what  he  judges  to  be  most  probably 
objectively  right  on  his  information'*  —  whether  he  judges 


TIIE  JUDGMENT  OF  CHARACTER  103 

^correctly  or  not.^  It  may  then  be  right  (in  one  sense)  for  a 
man  to  do  an  act  which  is  wrong  (in  the  other  sense). ^ 

What  is  the  justification  of  praise  and  blame? 

Kant  was  expressing  a  famihar  thought  v/hen  he  wrote 
that  a  man  deserved  no  praise  for  either  instinctive  or  calcu- 
lating acts.  Why  should  we  praise  a  man  for  doing  what  he 
wants  to  do,  what  is  the  most  natural  and  easy  thing  for 
him  to  do,  or  what  he  can  foresee  will  bring  about  desirable 
consequences?  Should  we  not  praise  only  the  man  who 
fights  his  inclinations,  does  right  when  he  does  not  want  to, 
and  without  foresight  of  ultimate  gain? 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  we  do  praise  and  admire 
and  love  the  saints  who  do  right  easily  and  graciously.  We 
do  not  refuse  our  admiration  to  Christ  because  it  was  his 
meat  and  drink,  his  deepest  joy,  to  do  his  Father's  work; 
nor  do  we  imagine  him  as  having  to  wrestle  with  inner 
devils  of  spitefulness  and  ill-temper.  The  type  of  character 
we  rate  highest  is  that  from  which  all  these  low^er  impulses 
have  been  finally  banished,  the  character  that  inevitably 
seeks  the  pure  and  the  good.  And  on  the  other  hand,  as  we 
have  just  seen,  we  often  blame  the  man  who,  w  ith  the  noblest 
intentions,  and  at  great  cost  to  himself,  does  what  we  con- 
sider wrong. 

It  is  thus  true  that  our  reactions  of  praise  and  blame  are 
complicated  and  inconsistent.  We  often  praise  a  man  and 
blame  him  at  the  same  time;  praise  him  for  following  his 
conscience,  and  blame  him  for  having  a  narrow  and  dis- 

*  C.  D.  Broad  in  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  vol.  24,  pp.  316,  320. 

2  Strictly  speaking,  there  are  four  possible  usages  of  the  word  "right": 
An  act  is  right  which  (a)  is  actually  going  to  have  the  best  consequences; 
which  (6)  might  be  expected,  on  our  best  human  knowledge,  to  have  the 
best  consequences;  which  (c)  the  actor,  on  his  partial  information,  and  v.ath 
his  partial  powers  of  judgment,  exjjects  to  have  the  best  consequences; 
or  which  (d)  his  conscience  approves,  without  reference  to  consequencea. 


106  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

torted  conscience  to  follow.  Different  people  in  a  commun* 
ity  will  praise  or  blame  him  according  as  they  consider  this 
or  that  aspect  of  his  conduct.  What,  then,  is  the  rationale 
of  these  emotion-reactions? 

Obviously,  the  same  natural  forces  which  have  produced 
morality  have,  j)ari  passu,  produced  these  emotions;  they 
are  one  of  the  great  means  by  which  men  have  been  pushed 
into  being  moral.  We  praise  people,  ultimately,  because  it 
is  socially  useful  to  praise  them;  the  approbation  of  one's 
fellows  is  one  of  the  greatest  possible  incentives  to  right 
conduct.  We  blame  people  that  they  and  others  may  be 
thereby  deterred  from  wrongdoing.  For  ages  these  emotions 
have  been  arising  in  men's  hearts,  veering  their  fellows 
toward  moral  action.  Neither  blamer  nor  blamed  has  realized 
the  purpose  nature  may  be  said  to  have  had  in  view;  the 
emotional  reaction  has  been  instinctive,  like  sneezing.  But 
if  it  had  not  been  for  its  eminent  usefulness  it  would  never 
have  developed  and  become  so  deep-rooted  in  us.  If  blamC 
did  no  good,  if  it  did  not  tend  to  correct  evildoing,  it  would 
be  an  unhappy  and  undesirable  state  of  mind,  to  be  weeded 
out,  like  malice  or  discouragement.  Praise  might  be  kept 
for  its  intrinsic  worth,  its  agreeableness,  like  sweet  odors 
and  pleasant  colors.  But  actually  we  need  to  conserve  these 
reactions  for  their  extrinsic  value,  as  spurs  and  correctives. 

The  man  who  acts  upon  a  calculated  expectation  of 
consequences  is,  indeed,  to  be  praised,  if  the  ends  he  has 
sought  are  good  and  his  calculation  correct.  Prudence,  fore- 
sight, thoughtfulness  are  among  the  most  important  virtues. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  man  who  does  right  instinctively  is 
to  be  most  admired;  for  to  reach  that  goal  is  the  aim  of  much 
of  our  inner  struggle.  The  approbation  we  heap  upon  him, 
if  not  needed  to  keep  him  up  to  his  best,  at  least  is  beneficial 
to  others,  who  thereby  may  be  stimulated  to  imitate  his 
goodness.   Any  sort  of  conduct  that  is  in  line  with  human 


THE  JUDGlViENT  OF  CHARACTER  107 

Welfare  is  to  be  praised  and  loved  and  sung,  and  kept  before 
the  minds  of  the  young  and  plastic- 
More  deeply  rooted,  perhaps,  than  the  disparagement  of 
praise,  is  the  compassionate  revulsion  from  blame.  "He 
meant  well";  '*His  conscience  is  clear";  "How  could  he 
help  sinning  with  such  a  bringing-up ! "  —  such  pleas  pull 
us  up  in  the  midst  of  our  condemnation.  And  they  must 
have  their  weight.  Conscientiousness  must  be  praised, 
while  in  the  same  breath  we  blame  the  folly  or  fanaticism 
it  led  to.  And  the  visibly  degrading  effects  of  environment 
should  make  us  tender  toward  the  erring,  even  while,  for 
their  own  sakes  and  the  sake  of  others,  we  continue  to  blame 
the  sin.  Society  cannot  afford  to  overlook  sin  because  it 
sees  provocation  for  it.  There  is  always  provocation,  there 
are  always  causes  outside  the  sinner's  heart.  But  there  is 
also  always  a  cause  within  the  heart,  an  openness  to  temp- 
tation, and  acquiescence  in  the  evil  impulse,  which  we  must 
try  to  reach  and  influence  by  our  blame  and  condemnation. 
No  doubt  in  like  circumstances  we  should  do  as  badly,  or 
worse.  But  to  blame  does  not  mean  that  we  set  ourselves 
up  as  of  finer  clay;  it  means  only  that  we  continue  to  use  a 
weapon  of  great  value  for  the  advancement  of  human  wel- 
fare. A  man  always  "could  have  helped  it"  —  he  could 
have  if  his  inward  aversion  to  the  sin  had  been  strong 
enough;  and  it  is  precisely  because  blame  tends  to  make 
that  aversion  stronger  in  the  sinner  and  in  all  who  are  aware 
of  it,  that  we  must  employ  it. 

Reward  and  punishment  are  the  materialization  of  praise 
and  blame  and  have  the  same  uses.  We  reward  and  punish 
men  not  because  in  some  unanalyzable  sense  they  "deserve" 
it,  but  ultimately  in  order  to  foster  noble  and  heroic  acts 
and  deter  men  from  crime.  The  giving  of  rewards  for  good 
conduct  has  never  been  systematized  (except  for  Carnegie 
medals,  school  prizes,  and  a  few  other  cases),  and  the 


108  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

practical  difficulties  in  the  way  are  probably  insuperable; 
Indeed,  the  natural  outward  rewards  of  fame,  position, 
increased  salary,  etc.,  would  be  spur  enough,  if  they  could 
be  made  less  capricious  and  more  certain.  But  to  restrain 
its  members  from  injury  to  one  another  is  so  necessary  to 
society,  and  so  difficult,  that  elaborate  systems  of  punish- 
ment have  been  used  since  prehistoric  times.  To  a  considera- 
tion of  the  contemporary  problems  concerning  punishment 
we  shall  return  at  a  later  stage  in  our  study. 

What  is  responsibility? 

There  is  one  plea  which  exempts  a  person  from  blame  — 
when  we  say  he  was  not  responsible.  Responsibility  means 
accountability,  liability  to  blame  and  punishment.  We  do 
not  hold  accountable  those  classes  whom  it  would  do  no 
good  to  blame  or  punish.  Babies,  the  feeble-minded,  the 
insane,  are  not  deterred  by  blame;  hence  we  do  not  hold 
them  responsible.  Beyond  these  obvious  exemptions  there 
are  all  sorts  of  degrees  of  responsibility,  carefully  worked 
out  in  that  branch  of  the  law  known  as  "torts."  The  prin- 
ciple upon  which  man  has  instinctively  gone,  and  which 
the  law  now  recognizes,  in  holding  men  accountable  —  or, 
in  other  words,  imputing  responsibility  —  is  the  degree  in 
which  they  might  have  been  expected  to  foresee  the  conse- 
quences of  their  acts.  The  following  set  of  cases  will  illus- 
trate the  principle: 

(1)  We  do  not  hold  a  man  responsible  at  all  for  unforesee- 
able results  of  his  action.  If  because  of  turning  his  cows  into 
pasture  a  passing  dog  gets  excited  and  tramples  a  neiglibor's 
flower-bed,  the  owner  of  the  cows  is  not  responsible  for  the 
damage;  it  would  do  no  good  to  exact  punishment  for  what 
was  so  indirectly  and  unexpectedly  due  to  his  action. 

(2)  But  if  his  cows  got  over  the  wall  and  trampled  the 
beds,  he  would  be  held  responsible,  in  different  degrees. 


THE  JUDGMENT  OF  CHARACTER  109 

according  to  the  circumstances.  If  he  had  inspected  the  wall 
with  eyes  of  experience  and  honestly  thought  it  would  keep 
the  cows  in,  we  deem  him  only  shghtly  responsible.  He 
could  have  done  nothing  more;  yet  he  must  learn  more 
accurately  to  distinguish  safe  walls  from  unsafe.  It  is  fairer 
for  him  to  pay  for  the  damage  than  for  the  owner  of  the 
flower-bed  to  suffer  the  loss;  such  risks  must  be  assumed  as 
a  part  of  the  business  of  keeping  cows. 

(3)  If  he  was  ignorant  of  the  necessary  height  or  strength 
of  wall,  we  blame  him  more.  He  has  no  business  keeping 
cows  until  he  knows  all  aspects  of  the  business. 

(4)  If  there  was  a  gap  in  the  wall  which  he  would  have 
noticed  if  he  had  taken  ordinary  care,  we  hold  him  still 
further  to  blame,  and  his  punishment  must  be  severer. 

(5)  If  he  remembered  the  gap  in  the  wall  and  did  not  take 
the  trouble  to  repair  it,  thereby  consenting  to  the  damage  his 
cows  might  do,  his  case  is  still  worse. 

(6)  Finally,  if  he  deliberately  turned  the  cows  into  his 
field  with  the  hope  that  they  would  go  through  the  gap  and 
damage  his  neighbor's  flower-beds,  he  is  the  most  dangerous 
type  of  criminal,  of  "malice  aforethought,'*  and  his  punish- 
ment must  be  severest  of  all. 

In  such  ways  do  we  distinguish  between  traits  of  character 
more  and  more  dangerous  to  society,  and  adjust  our  blame 
and  punishment  to  their  different  degrees  of  danger,  and  the 
differing  degrees  of  efficacy  that  the  blame  and  punishment 
may  have.  But  throughout  these  are  purely  utilitarian,  an 
unhappy  necessity  for  the  preservation  of  human  welfare. 

On  goodness  of  character:  Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics,  chap.  xm. 
F.  Paulsen,  System  of  Ethics,  bk.  n,  chap,  i,  sees.  3,  5.  LesHe  Stephen, 
Science  of  Ethics,  chap.  vii. 

The  Kantian  theory:  Kant's  Metaphysic  of  Morality.  A  good 
edition  in  English  is  Abbott's  Kant's  Theory  of  Ethics.  There  are 


110  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

many  discussions  of  his  theory.  An  interesting  recent  one  is  Felix 
Adler's,  in  Essays  Philosophical  and  Psychological  in  Honor  oj 
William  James;  see  also  the  chapter  of  Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics. 
above  mentioned;  Paulsen,  System  of  Ethics,  bk.  ii,  chap,  v,  sees. 
3,  4;  American  Journal  of  Psychology ,  vol.  8,  p.  528. 

On  responsibility :  Mezes,  op.  cit.,  pp.  29-35.  Sutherland,  op.  cit., 
vol.  II,  chap.  XVIII.  Alexander,  Moral  Order  and  Progress,  bk.  iii, 
chap.  lu,  sec.  n. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  SOLUTION  OF  PERSONAL  PROBLEMS 

Personal  morality  is  the  way  to  live  the  most  desirable, 
the  most  intrinsically  valuable,  life  —  in  the  long  run,  and 
in  view  of  the  unescapable  needs  and  conditions  of  human 
welfare;  the  way  to  avoid  the  snares  and  pitfalls  of  impulse 
and  attain  those  sweetest  goods  that  come  only  through 
effort  and  sacrifice  of  lesser  goods.  That  is  what  moraUty 
isy  with  reference  to  the  single  individual  alone,  and  that 
is  ample  justification  for  it.  A  recent  WTiter  phrases  it 
as  follows:  "I  would  define  goodness  as  doing  what  one 
would  wish  one  had  done  in  twenty  years  —  twenty  years, 
twenty  days,  twenty  minutes,  twenty  seconds,  according 
to  the  time  the  action  takes  to  get  ripe.  .  .  .  Perhaps  when 
we  stop  teasing  people  and  take  goodness  seriously  and 
calmly,  and  see  that  goodness  is  essentially  imagination  — 
that  it  is  brains,  that  it  is  thinl^ing  down  through  to  what 
one  really  wants  —  goodness  will  begin  to  be  more  coveted. 
Except  among  people  with  almost  no  brains  or  imagination 
at  all,  it  will  be  popular." ^ 

The  difference  between  the  moral  and  the  immoral  man 
is  not  that  the  latter  allows  himself  to  enjoy  pleasant  and 
exciting  phases  of  experience  which  the  former  denies  him- 
self for  the  sake  of  some  good  lying  outside  of  experience, 
but  that  the  latter  indulges  himself  in  any  agreeable  sensa- 
tion that  he  chances  to  desire,  while  the  former  gives  up 

^  Gerald  Stanley  Lee.  Cf.  also  G.  Lowes  Dickinson,  The  Meaning  of 
Good,  p.  141.  Of  morality  he  says:  "Its  specific  quality  consists  in  the  refusal 
to  seize  some  immediate  and  inferior  good  with  a  view  to  the  attainment  of 
»ne  that  is  remoter  but  higher." 


112  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

lesser  goods  when  they  conflict  with  greater,  being  content 
not  with  any  goods  that  may  come  to  hand,  but  only  with 
the  attainable  best.^ 

What  are  the  inadequacies  of  instinct  and  impulse  that 
necessitate  morality? 

It  would  seem  as  if  the  best  way  to  live  should  be  obvious 
and  irresistible  in  its  appeal.  But  in  truth  we  are  commonly 
very  blind  and  fooHsh  about  this  business  of  living;  we  lack 
wisdom,  and  we  lack  motive-power  at  the  right  place. 
Instinct  is  altogether  too  clumsy  and  impulse  too  uncertain. 
We  need  a  more  delicate  adjustment;  for  this,  intelligence 
and  conscience  have  been  developed.  Morality  is  the  way 
of  life  that  intelligence  and  conscience  oppose  to  instinct 
and  impulse.  Not  to  be  guided  by  their  wisdom  is  to  forfeit 
our  birthright,  like  Esau,  for  a  mere  mess  of  pottage.  Some 
of  the  main  types  of  difficulty  that  necessitate  their  over- 
ruling guidance  we  may  now  note. 

(1)  Our  impulses  are  often  deceptive.  What  promises 
keen  pleasure  turns  flat  in  the  tasting;  what  threatens  pain 
may  prove  our  greatest  joy.  Most  men  are  led  astray  at  one 
time  or  other  by  some  delusory  good,  some  ignis  fatuus  — 
whoring,  money-making,  fame  are  among  the  commonest  — 
which  has  fascinated  them,  from  the  thought  of  which  they 
cannot  tear  themselves  away,  but  which  brings  no  propor- 
tionate pleasure  in  realization,  or  an  evanescent  pleasure  — 
followed  by  lasting  regret. 

"  Pleasures  are  like  poppies  spread. 
You  seize  the  flow'r,  its  bloom  is  shed." 

*  Cf.  G.  Santayana,  Reason  in  Science,  pp.  252-53:  "Happiness  is  hidden 
from  a  free  and  casual  will;  it  belongs  rather  to  one  chastened  by  a  long 
education  and  unfolded  in  an  atmosphere  of  sacred  and  perfected  institu- 
tions. It  is  discipline  that  renders  men  rational  and  capable  of  happiness, 
by  suppressing  without  hatred  what  needs  to  be  suppressed  to  attain  a 
beautiful  naturalness." 


THE  SOLUTION  OF  PERSONAL  PROBLEMS  118 

All  sorts  of  insidious  consequences  follow  secretly  in  the  train 
of  innocent-seeming  acts;  the  value  of  following  a  given 
impulse  is  complicated  in  many  ways  of  which  the  impulse 
itself  does  not  inform  us.  We  are  the  frequent  victims  of 
a  sort  of  inward  mirage,  and  have  to  learn  to  discount  our 
hopes  and  fears.  Morality  is  the  corrector  of  these  false  valu- 
ations; it  discriminates  for  us  between  real  and  counterfeit 
goods,  teaches  us  to  discount  the  pictures  of  our  imagination 
and  see  the  gnawed  bones  on  the  beach  where  the  sirens  sing. 

(2)  Our  impulses  often  clash.  And  since,  as  we  have  just 
said,  the  relative  worth  to  us  of  the  acts  is  not  always  accu- 
rately represented  by  the  impulses,  we  need  to  stand  off  and 
compare  them  impartially.  No  single  passion  must  be  al- 
lowed to  run  amuck;  the  opposing  voices,  however  feeble, 
must  be  heard.  When  desires  are  at  loggerheads,  when  a 
deadlock  of  interests  arises  —  an  almost  daily  occurrence 
when  life  is  kept  at  a  white  heat  —  there  must  be  some 
moderator,  some  governing  power.  Morality  is  the  princi- 
ple of  coordination,  the  harmonizer,  the  arbitrator  of  con- 
flicting claims. 

(3)  We  often  lack  impulses  which  would  add  much  to  the 
worth  of  our  lives;  we  are  blind  to  all  sorts  of  opportunities 
for  rich  and  joyous  living.  We  need  to  develop  our  latent 
needs,  to  expand  our  natures  to  their  full  potentiality,  to 
learn  to  love  many  things  we  have  not  cared  for.  In  general 
we  ignore  the  joys  that  we  have  not  ourselves  experienced  or 
imagined,  and  those  which  belong  to  a  different  realm  from 
that  of  our  temporary  enthusiasms.  A  lovesick  swain,  an 
opium  fiend,  are  utterly  unable  to  respond  to  the  lure  of 
outdoor  sport  or  the  joy  of  the  well-doing  of  work;  these  joys, 
though  perhaps  acknowledged  as  real  possibilities  for  them, 
fail  to  attract  their  wills,  touch  no  chord  in  them,  have  no 
influence  on  their  choices.  Morality  is  the  great  eye-opener 
and  insistent  reminder  of  ignored  goods. 


114  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

(4)  We  often  have  perverted  impulses.  We  inherit  dis- 
harmonies from  other  conditions  of  Ufe,  like  the  vermiform 
appendix  and  the  many  other  vestigial  organs  which  have 
come  down  to  us  only  for  harm.  In  general  we  inherit  bodies 
and  brains  fairly  well  organized  for  our  welfare;  but  there 
are  still  atavisms  to  be  ruthlessly  stamped  out.  The  craving 
for  stimulants  or  drugs,  sexual  perversions,  kleptomania, 
pyromania,  and  the  other  manias,  bad  temper,  jealousy  — 
there  is  a  good  deal  of  the  old  Adam  in  us  which  is  just 
wholly  bad  and  to  be  utterly  done  away  with;  rebellious 
impulses  that  are  hopelessly  at  war  with  our  own  good  and 
must  go  the  way  of  cannibalism  and  polygamy.  Morality 
is  the  stern  exterminator  of  all  such  enemies  of  human  wel- 
fare. 

What  factors  are  to  be  considered  in  estimating  the  worth 
of  personal  moral  ideals? 

This  summary  consideration  of  the  obstacles  that  block 
the  path  to  happiness  through  the  heedless  following  of 
impulse,  shows  the  necessity  of  moral  ideals;  that  is  to  say, 
of  directive  codes  which  shall  steer  the  will  through  the 
tumultuous  seas  of  haphazard  desire  into  the  harbor  of  its 
true  welfare.  How,  then,  can  we  decide  between  conflicting 
ideals  and  estimate  their  relative  value .5^  It  can  only  be  by 
judging  through  experience  the  degree  of  happiness  which 
they  severally  effect  in  the  situations  to  which  they  are  to  be 
applied.  But  there  are  many  factors  which  contribute  to  or 
detract  from  that  happiness  in  its  totality;  and  a  proper 
estimation  of  ideals  must  note  the  degree  in  which  they  pro- 
vide for  each  possible  element  of  satisfaction. 

(1)  In  the  first  place,  the  mere  fact  of  yielding  to  an 
impulse,  of  whatever  sort,  brings  a  relief  from  craving,  and  a 
momentary  satisfaction.  Just  to  do  what  we  wish  to  do  is, 
negatively  at  least,  a  good;  and  in  so  far  every  act  desired 


THE  SOLUTION  OF  PERSONAL  PROBLEMS  115 

is  really  desirable.  An  ideal  which  crosses  inclination  must 
have  this  initial  price  debited  against  it.  At  times  the  rest- 
lessness of  pent-up  longing  is  so  great  that  it  pays  to  gratify 
it  even  at  some  cost  of  pain  or  loss.  But  in  general,  desire 
can  be  modified  to  fit  need;  and  rational  ideals  rather  than 
silly  wishes  must  guide  us.  It  is  dangerous  to  lay  much  stress 
on  the  urgency  of  desire,  and  almost  always  possible  with  a 
little  firmness  to  hush  the  blind  yearning  and  replace  it 
with  more  ultimately  satisfying  desires. 

(2)  Normally,  however,  our  desires  represent  real  goods, 
which  must  bulk  much  larger  in  oiu*  calculation  than  the 
mere  rehef  of  yielding  to  the  impulse.  Not  only  is  it  ipso 
facto  good  to  have  what  we  want,  but  what  we  want  is 
usually  something  that  can  directly  or  indirectly  give  us 
pleasure.  The  pleasure,  then,  to  be  attained  through 
following  this  or  that  impulse  is  to  be  estimated,  both  in  its 
intensity  and  its  duration.  The  certainty  or  uncertainty  of 
its  attainment  may  also  legitimately  be  considered.  And 
this  pleasure,  though  it  is  but  one  phase  of  the  total  situa- 
tion, must  be  taken  seriously  into  account  in  our  appraisal 
of  ideals  which  permit  or  forbid  it. 

(3)  A  further  question  is  as  to  the  purity  of  this  pleasure, 
i.e.,  its  freedom  from  mixture  with  pain.  Most  selfish  and 
sensual  pleasures,  however  keen,  are  so  interwoven  with 
restlessness,  shame,  or  dissatisfaction,  or  so  inevitably  ac- 
companied by  a  revulsion  of  feeling,  disgust  or  loathing, 
that  they  must  be  sharply  discounted  in  our  calculus. 
Whereas  intellectual,  aesthetic,  religious  pleasures  are  gen- 
erally free  from  such  intermixture  of  pain,  and  so,  though 
milder,  on  the  whole  preferable  even  in  their  immediacy  and 
apart  from  ultimate  consequences. 

(4)  But  the  most  imperious  need  of  life  lies  in  the  tracing- 
out  and  paying  heed  to  these  extrinsic  values,  these  after- 
effects of  conduct.    The  drinking  of  alcohohc  liquors,  for 


116  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

example,  not  only  stills  a  craving  that  arises  in  a  man's 
mind,  not  only  brings  pleasure  of  taste  and  comfort  of 
oblivion,  not  only  brings  the  quick  revulsion  of  emotional 
staleness  and  headache,  but  has  its  gradual  and  inevitable 
effects  in  undermining  the  constitution,  lessening  the  power 
of  resistance  to  disease,  and  decreasing  the  vitality  of 
offspring.  Quite  commonly  these  ultimate  consequences 
are  the  most  important,  and  so  the  determining,  factors  in 
deciding  our  ideals.  Among  them  may  be  included  the 
influence  of  single  acts  in  increasing  or  decreasing  the  power 
to  resist  future  temptations,  and  the  gradual  paralysis  of 
the  will  through  unchecked  self-indulgence. 

(5)  Another  important  aspect  of  any  moral  situation  lies 
in  the  rejection  which  every  choice  involves.  Not  only  must 
we  ask  what  a  given  impulse  has  to  offer  us,  in  immediate 
and  remote  satisfaction;  we  must  consider  what  alternative 
goods  its  adoption  precludes.  What  might  we  have  been 
doing  with  our  time  and  strength  or  money?  Is  this  act  not 
only  a  good  one,  is  it  the  best  one  for  that  moment  of  our 
lives?  An  important  function  of  ideals  is  to  point  us  to 
realms  of  happiness  into  which  our  preexisting  impulses 
might  never  have  led  us,  and  whose  existence  we  might 
scarcely  have  suspected. 

(6)  Finally,  we  may  ask  of  every  proposed  line  of  conduct, 
what  will  be  its  worth  to  us  in  memory?  Not  only  in  our 
leisure  hours,  but  in  a  current  of  subconscious  reflection  that 
accompanies  our  active  life,  we  constantly  live  in  the 
presence  of  our  past.  And  the  nature  of  memory  is  such 
that  it  cannot  well  retain  the  traces  of  certain  of  our  keenest 
pleasures,  but  can  continually  feed  us  upon  other  joys  of  our 
past.  It  is  imperative,  then,  for  a  happy  life,  so  to  live  that 
the  years  are  pleasant  to  look  back  upon.  Vicious  self- 
indulgence  and  selfishness  are  rarely  satisfying  in  retrospec- 
tion, whereas  all  courage  and  heroism  and  tenderness  are  a 


THE  SOLUTION  OF  PERSONAL  PROBLEMS  117 

source  of  unending  comfort.  For  better  or  worse,  we  are, 
and  cannot  shirk  being,  judges  of  our  own  conduct.  We  may 
be  prejudiced,  and  may  properly  try  to  correct  our  preju- 
dices; we  may  discount  our  own  disapprovals,  and  seek  to 
escape  from  our  own  self-condemnation.  But  after  all,  we 
must  live  with  ourselves;  and  it  pays  to  aim  to  please  not 
only  the  evanescent  impulses  whose  disapproval  will  soon 
be  forgotten,  but  that  more  deeply  rooted  and  insistent 
judgment  that  cannot  wholly  be  stilled.  Regret  and  remorse 
are  among  the  greatest  poisoners  of  happiness,  and  prospec- 
tive ideals  must  bear  that  truth  in  mind. 

**No  matter  what  other  elements  in  any  moment  of  con- 
sciousness may  tend  to  give  it  agreeable  tone,  if  there  is  not 
the  element  of  approval,  there  is  not  yet  any  deep,  wide,  and 
lasting  pleasantness  for  consciousness.  A  flash  of  light  here, 
a  casual  word  there,  and  it  is  gone. 

"Just  when  we  are  safest,  there's  a  sunset-touch; 
A  fancy  from  a  flower-bell,  some  one's  death, 
A  chorus-ending  from  Euripides,  — 
And  that's  enough" 

to  bring  the  shock  of  disapproval,  and  with  it  disagreeable 
feeling-tone  continues  till  disapproval  is  removed  or 
approval  is  won.  If  there  be  won  this  approval,  other  ele- 
ments of  disagreeableness,  however  great,  can  be  endured. 
The  massive  movement  of  the  complex  unified  consciousness 
of  a  Socrates  drinking  hemlock,  of  a  Jesus  dying  on  the 
cross,  whatever  strong  eddies  of  pain  there  be  in  it,  is  still 
toned  agreeably,  as  it  makes  head  conqueringly  toward 
that  end  which  each  has  ideally  constructed  as  fit." ^ 

No  reference  has  been  made,  in  this  summary  of  the  factors 
which  determine  our  estimate  of  the  worth  of  personal  ideals, 

*  H.  G.  Lord,  in  Essays  Philosophical  and  Psychological  in  Uonor  oj 
William  James,  p.  388-89. 


118  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

to  the  bearing  of  these  ideals  upon  other  people's  lives. 
Actually,  of  course,  the  social  values  of  even  primarily  per- 
sonal ideals  are  impossible  to  overlook,  and  often  bulk 
larger  than  the  merely  personal  values.  This  whole  side 
of  the  matter  will  be  left  for  convenience,  however,  to  the 
following  chapter. 

Epicureanism  vs.  Puritanism. 

Personal  ideals  have  swung  historically  between  two 
magnets,  richness  and  purity,  self-expression  and  self- 
repression,  indulgence  and  asceticism.  The  crux  of  the 
individual's  problem  is  the  question  how  much  repression  is 
necessary;  and  man's  answer  has  wavered  somewhere 
between  these  extremes,  which  we  may  designate  by  the 
names  of  their  best-known  exemplars.  Epicureanism  and 
Puritanism.  Many  differences  in  degree  or  detail  there  have 
been,  of  course,  in  the  various  historic  embodiments  of  these 
ideals;  but  for  the  sake  of  making  clear  the  fundamental 
contrast  we  may  neglect  these  individual  divergences  and 
group  together  those  on  the  one  hand  who  have  called  men 
to  a  fuller,  completer  life  and  those  who  have  summoned 
them  to  an  austerer  and  purer  life,  free  from  taint  of  sin  and 
regret.  We  shall  then  put  in  the  first  group  such  well-known 
seers  and  poets  as  Epicurus,  Lucretius,  Horace,  Goethe, 
Shelley,  Byron,  Walter  Pater,  Walt  Whitman;  we  shall 
think  of  the  Greek  gods,  of  the  Renaissance  artists,  the 
English  cavaliers.  We  shall  think  of  the  motto,  "Carpe 
diem,"  and  "Gather  ye  rosebuds  while  ye  may";  and  per- 
haps of  Stevenson's 

"The  world  is  so  full  of  a  number  of  things, 
I'm  sure  we  should  all  be  as  happy  as  kings."* 

In  contrast  to  these  followers  of  impulse  we  shall  group 

*  An  excellent  brief  plea  for  this  ideal  of  the  life  that  shall  be  rich  in 
experience  can  be  found  in  Walter  Pater's  Renaissance,  the  "Conclusion." 


THE  SOLUTION  OF  PERSONAL  PROBLEMS  119 

those  who  are  afraid  of  impulse,  those  who  warn  and  rebuke 
and  seek  to  save  Ufe  from  its  pitfalls.  We  shall  think  of 
Buddha,  the  Stoics,  the  Hebrew  prophets,  the  mediseval 
saints,  Dante  and  Savonarola,  the  English  and  American 
Puritans,  or,  in  modern  times,  of  Tolstoy.  The  ideal  of 
such  men  is  expressed  not  by  the  wholesomely  happy  and 
care-free  Greek  gods,  but  by  haloed  saint,  by  the  calm-eyed 
Buddha  of  Eastern  lands,  by  the  figure  of  Christ  on  the 
cross.  The  answer  to  the  Epicurean's  heedlessness  is 
expressed  in  such  lines  as 

"WTiat  is  this  world's  delight? 
Lightning  that  mocks  the  night. 
Brief  even  as  bright." 

It  is  condensed  in  the  familiar  "Respicefinem";  the  peace 
of  its  self-denial  shines  out  in  Christ's  "Not  my  will  but 
thine,"  and  in  Dante's  "In  His  wall  is  our  peace."  Meager 
and  cold  and  repellent  as  this  ideal  in  its  extreme  expressions 
often  seems,  it  appeals  to  us  as  the  softer  and  irresponsible 
ideal  of  the  Epicureans  cannot.  But  obviously  our  way  lies 
between  the  extremes.  And  after  all  that  has  now  been  said, 
our  summary  of  the  dangers  inherent  in  each  ideal  may  be 
very  brief. 

What  are  the  evils  in  undue  self-indulgence? 

Apart  from  the  selfishness  of  self-indulgence,  which  is 
obvious  upon  the  surface,  but  with  which  we  are  not  now 
concerned,  — 

(1)  Self-indulgence,  if  unbridled,  leads  almost  inevitably 
to  pain,  disease,  and  premature  death.  For  in  the  majority 
of  men  there  are  certain  instincts  so  strong  and  so  dangerous 
—  as,  the  sex-instinct,  the  craving  for  stimulants  and 
excitement  —  that  where  no  repressive  principle  exists  they 
tend  to  override  the  grumblings  of  prudence  and  drag  their 
possessor  to  disaster.   It  is  impossible  for  most  men,  if  they 


120  TIIE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

give  themselves  over  to  the  pursuit  of  personal  pleasure,  to 
keep  to  the  quiet,  refined,  healthful  pleasures  which  Epicurus 
advocated.  Their  feet  go  down  to  death. 

(2)  But  even  if  the  worst  penalties  are  escaped,  indulgence 
brings  at  least  satiety,  the  "heart  high  cloyed,"  a  blunted 
capacity  for  enjoyment,  ennui,  restlessness,  and  depression 
of  spirit.  Keen  as  its  zest  may  be  at  the  outset,  it  is  short- 
lived at  best;  and  with  the  ensuing  emotional  fatigue, 
pleasures  pall,  life  seems  empty,  robbed  of  its  meaning  and 
glory. 

(3)  Moreover,  pleasure-seeking  is  cursed  with  the  specter 
of  aimlessness;  it  entirely  misses  the  deepest  and  most  satis- 
fying joys  of  life,  the  joy  of  healthy,  unspent  forces  and 
desires,  the  joy  of  purpose  and  achievement,  the  joy  of  the 
pure,  disciplined,  loyal  life.  It  renders  these  joys  unattain- 
able; we  cannot  serve  God  and  sense,  ideals  and  lusts  of  the 
flesh.  The  parting  of  the  ways  lies  before  every  man;  and  it 
is  the  perennial  tragedy  of  life  that  so  many,  misled  by 
impulse  and  bhnded  by  desire,  fail  to  see  the  beauty  of  holi- 
ness and  choose  the  lesser  good. 

(4)  Especially  as  we  grow  older  does  it  matter  less  and 
less  what  evanescent  enjoyments  we  have  had,  and  more  and 
more  what  we  have  accomplished.  Our  happiness  lies 
increasingly  with  the  years  in  the  memory,  subconscious 
most  of  the  time  but  constantly  potent  in  its  influence,  of 
our  past.  To  have  gratified  the  senses,  to  have  tasted  the 
superficial  delights  of  life,  to  have  yielded  to  the  tug  of 
desire,  leaves  little  in  the  way  of  satisfaction  behind;  but 
to  have  done  something  worthy,  to  have  lived  nobly,  even 
to  have  fought  and  failed,  is  a  lasting  honor  and  joy. 

What  are  the  evils  in  undue  self-repression? 

Asceticism,  like  self-indulgence,  is  selfish.  It  asks,  "What 
shall  I  do  to  be  saved?"  rather  than  "What  shall  I  do  to 


THE  SOLUTION  OF  PERSONAL  PROBLEMS  121 

serve?"  Endlessly  preoccupied  with  the  endeavor  not  to  do 
wrong,  the  ascetics  have  failed  to  do  the  positive  good  they 
ought.  The  grime  that  comes  through  loving  service  is 
better  than  the  stainlessness  of  inactivity;  as  the  poet 
Spenser  puts  it,  — 

"Entire  affection  hateth  nicer  hands." 

And  the  emphasis  upon  freedom  from  taint  of  sin  tends  to 
produce  a  scorn  of  others  who  do  not  thus  deny  themselves, 
a  self -righteousness  and  Pharisaism,  a  callousness  to  others, 
w^hich  distorts  the  judgment  as  well  as  dries  up  the  sympa- 
thies. 

But  apart  from  these  dangers,  and  from  a  purely  personal 
point  of  view,  asceticism  has  its  evil  side. 

(1)  An  overemphasis  upon  self-denial  sacrifices  unneces- 
sarily the  sweetness  and  richness  of  life,  stunts  it,  distorts  it, 
robs  it  of  its  natural  fruition.  The  denial  of  any  satisfaction 
is  cruel  except  as  it  is  necessary.  Purity,  carried  to  a  need- 
less extreme,  became  celibacy;  the  virtue  of  frugality  became 
the  vice  of  a  starvation  diet,  producing  the  emaciated  and 
weakened  saints;  the  unworldliness  which  can  be  in  the 
world  but  not  of  it  was  transformed  into  the  morbidly  lonely 
and  futile  isolation  of  the  hermits.  These  are  abnormal  and 
undesirable  perversions  of  human  nature. 

(2)  A  reaction  from  needless  repression  is  almost  inevit- 
able. The  attempt  radically  to  alter  and  repress  human 
nature  is  nearly  always  disastrous.  Most  of  the  ascetics 
had  to  pass  their  days  in  constant  struggles  against  their 
temptations,  and  many  of  them  recurrently  lapsed  into  wild 
orgies  of  sin,  the  result  of  pent-up  impulses  denied  their 
natural  channels.  Morality  should  be  rather  directive  than 
repressive,  using  all  of  our  energies  for  wise  and  noble  ends, 
and  overcoming  evil  with  good.  A  merely  negative  morahty 
implies  the  continual  dwelling  of  attention  upon  sin  and  the 


122  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

continual  rebellion  of  desire.  It  keeps  the  soul  in  a  state  of 
unstable  equilibrium,  and  defeats  its  own  ends. 

R.  B.  Perry,  Moral  Economy,  chap,  ii,  sees,  ii,  m;  chap,  m, 
sees,  n,  m,  rv.  F.  Paulsen,  System  of  Ethics,  bk.  ni,  chap.  n. 
S.  E.  Mezes,  Ethics,  chap,  x,  xi,  Deweyand  Tufts,  Ethics,  chap, 
xvni,  sees.  1,  2,  4;  chap,  xrx,  sees.  1,  2,  4.  Matthew  Arnold, 
Culture  and  Anarchy,  chap.  iv.  H.  C.  King,  Rational  Living,  pp. 
93-102.  W.  deW.  Hyde,  The  Five  Great  Philosophies  of  Life,  chaps, 
i-iv.  H.  Rashdall,  Theory  of  Good  and  Evil,  bk.  n,  chap.  in.  R.  D. 
Hicks,  Stoic  and  Epicurean.  G.  M.  Stratton,  Psychology  of  the  Re^ 
ligiov^  Life,  chaps,  m,  iv.  E.  B.  Holt,  The  Freudian  Wish  and  it» 
Place  in  Ethics. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  SOLUTION  OF  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Duty,  like  charity,  begins  at  home;  and  we  need  to  take 
the  motes  out  of  our  own  eyes  before  we  can  see  clearly  how 
to  help  our  fellows.  To  keep  physically  well,  pure,  and  pru- 
dent, following  worthy  purposes  and  smothering  unruly  de- 
sires, is  our  first  business;  and  there  would  be  much  less  to 
do  for  one  another  if  every  one  did  his  duty  by  himself. 

But  even  with  our  best  endeavors  we  need  a  helping  hand 
now  and  then,  and,  indeed,  are  continuously  dependent 
upon  the  work  and  kindness  of  others  for  all  that  makes  life 
tolerable,  or  even  possible.  And  the  other  side  to  this  truth 
is  that  we  are  never  free  from  the  obHgation  of  doing  our 
iuty  squarely  by  those  whose  welfare  is  in  some  degree  de- 
pendent upon  us.  No  man  can,  if  he  would,  live  to  himself 
alone;  hfe  is  necessarily  and  essentially  social.  Personal  and 
social  duties  are  so  inextricably  interwoven  that  it  is 
impossible  except  by  an  artificial  abstraction  to  separate 
them.  The  cultivation  of  one's  own  health,  for  example,  is 
a  boon  to  the  community;  and  to  care  for  the  community's 
health  is  to  safeguard  one's  own.  Every  advance  in  persona/ 
purity,  culture,  or  self-control  increases  the  individual's 
value  and  diminishes  his  menace  to  his  fellows;  while  every 
step  in  social  amelioration  makes  life  freer  and  more  com- 
fortable for  him.  So  close-knit  is  society  to-day  that  an 
indifference  to  sanitation  in  Asia  or  a  religious  persecution  in 
Russia  may  produce  disastrous  results  to  some  innocent  and 
utterly  indifferent  individual  in  Massachusetts  or  California. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  vice  so  solitary  and  so  con- 


184  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

cealed  that  it  may  not  have  widespread  social  results.' 
Society  has  a  vital  interest  in  the  personal  life  of  its  mem- 
bers, and  every  member,  however  self-contained  he  may  be, 
has  a  vital  interest  in  the  general  standards  of  morality. 
.  For  purposes  of  analysis,  however,  it  is  convenient  to 
make  the  distinction  between  the  two  aspects  of  morality, 
the  governance  of  intra-human  and  of  inter-human  relations; 
the  ordering  of  the  single  life  and  the  ordering  of  the  com- 
munity life.  Of  the  two  the  latter  is  even  more  imperative 
than  the  former,  the  arbitration  of  clashes  between  individ- 
uals even  more  difficult  than  the  governing  of  the  impulses 
within  a  single  heart.  We  turn,  therefore,  to  consider  the 
problems  involved  in  the  general  conception  of  social 
morality,  which  we  may  define  as  the  direction  of  the  action 
of  each  toward  the  greatest  attainable  welfare  of  all. 

Why  should  we  be  altruistic? 

That  altruism  (action  directed  toward  others*  welfare)  is 
best  for  the  community  as  a  whole  is  obvious.  In  order  to 
maintain  his  life  in  the  face  of  the  many  obstacles  that 
thwart  and  dangers  that  threaten  him,  man  must  present  a 
sohd  front  to  the  universe.  All  clashes  of  interest,  friction, 
and  civil  strife,  all  withholding  of  help,  means  a  weakening 
of  his  united  forces,  an  invitation  to  disaster.  And  even 
where  life  becomes  relatively  secure  and  individualism  pos- 
sible, the  greatest  good  for  the  greatest  number  is  attainable 
only  by  continual  cooperation  and  mutual  sacrifice.  So 
vital  is  it  to  each  member  of  the  community  that  selfishness 
and  cruelty  in  others  be  repressed,  that  society  cannot 
afford  to  leave  at  least  the  grosser  forms  of  egoism  unpun- 

*  Cf.  George  Eliot  in  Adam  Bede:  "There  is  no  sort  of  wrong  deed  of 
which  a  man  can  bear  the  punishment  alone.  .  .  .  Men's  lives  are  as 
thoroughly  blended  as  the  air  they  breuthe;  evil  spreads  aa  necessarily  as 
diseuae." 


THE  SOLUTION  OF  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS  125 

ished.  Men  must  enforce  upon  one  another  that  mutual 
regard  which  individuals  are  constantly  tempted  to  ignore, 
but  without  which  no  man's  life  can  find  its  adequate  fulfill- 
ment or  security. 

No  man,  then,  can  be  called  moral,  can  be  said  to  have 
found  a  comprehensive  solution  of  life,  however  seK- 
controUed  and  pure  he  may  be,  if  he  is  cruel,  or  even  lacking 
in  consideration  for  others.  This  is  the  most  glaring  defect 
in  both  Epicureanism  and  asceticism;  both  are  fundamen- 
tally selfish.  For  the  proper  adjustment  of  life  to  its  needs 
we  must  turn  rather  to  Christianity,  or  to  Buddhism,  with 
their  ideals  of  service;  to  the  patriotic  ideals  of  the  noblest 
Greeks;  to  Kant,  with  his  "So  act  as  to  treat  humanity, 
whether  in  their  own  person  or  in  that  of  any  other,  as  an 
end,  never  as  a  means  only";  or  to  the  British  utilitarians 
with  their  "Every  one  to  count  for  one,  and  only  one." 

The  question,  however,  persistently  recurs.  Why  should 
the  individual  be  altruistic.'^  What  does  he  get  out  of  it? 
To  this  we  may  reply :  — 

(1)  The  life  of  service  is,  in  normal  cases,  a  happier  life 
in  itself  than  the  life  that  is  preoccupied  with  self.  It  is 
richer,  fuller  in  potentialities  of  joy;  it  is  freer  from  regrets 
and  the  eventual  emptiness  of  the  self -centered  life.^  It  is 
saner,  less  likely  to  be  veered  off  on  some  tangent  of  morbid 
and  ultimately  disastrous  indulgence. 

(2)  The  altruistic  life  earns  the  gratitude  and  love  of 
others,  while  the  selfish  life  remains  isolated,  unloved,  with- 
out their  stimulus  and  help.  Ingratitude  there  is,  of  course, 
and  the  returning  of  evil  for  good;  on  the  other  hand,  the 
selfish  man  may  hope  for  undeserved  forgiveness  and  even 

*  Cf.  Mill,  Utilitarianism,  chap.  2:  "WTien  people  who  are  toIeraW.y 
fortunate  in  their  outward  lot  do  not  find  in  life  sufficient  enjoyment  to 
make  it  valuable  to  them,  the  cause  generally  is,  caring  for  nobody  but  them- 
selves." 


126  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

love  from  his  fellows.  But  in  the  long  run  it  pays  to  be  good 
to  others;  bread  cast  upon  the  waters  does  return  after  many 
days;  normally  unkindness  provokes  dislike,  contempt,  open 
hostility,  retaliation,  while  kindness  finds  a  natural  and 
proper  reward  in  return  favors,  esteem,  and  affection.  No 
man  can  tell  when  he  will  be  in  need  of  sympathy  or  of  aid; 
it  is  folly  so  to  live  as  to  forfeit  our  fellows'  good  will.  And 
finally,  selfishness  carried  beyond  a  certain  point  brings  the 
penalty  not  only  of  the  unfavorable  opinion  and  private 
retaliations  of  others,  but  of  the  publicly  enforced  law. 

"In  normal  cases, "we  have  said.  And  we  must  add  that 
there  are  cases  —  though  they  are  less  common  than  we  are 
apt  to  suppose  —  in  which  the  good  of  the  individual  is 
hopelessly  at  variance  with  that  of  the  community.  If  our 
fellows  could  be  counted  on  for  a  fair  reciprocity  of  self- 
denial  and  service,  we  should  not  begrudge  these  necessary 
sacrifices.  The  sting  lies  not  so  much  in  the  loss  of  personal 
pleasures  as  in  the  lack  of  appreciation  and  return;  to  do  our 
part  when  others  are  not  doing  theirs  takes,  indeed,  a  touch 
of  saintliness.  Socrates  drinking  the  hemlock,  Jesus  dying 
in  agony  on  the  cross,  Regulus  returning  to  be  tortured  at 
Carthage,  were  deliberately  sacrificing  their  personal  welfare 
for  the  good  of  other  men.  And  in  numberless  ways  a  host 
of  heroic  men  and  women  have  practised  and  are  daily 
practising  unrewarded  self-denial  in  the  name  of  love  and 
service,  self-denial  which  by  no  means  always  brings  a  joy 
commensurate  with  the  pain.  These  are  the  abnormal  cases; 
but  the  abnormal  is,  after  all,  not  so  very  uncommon.  And 
for  these  men  and  women  we  must  grieve,  while  we  honor 
and  admire  them  and  hold  them  up  for  imitation.  Society 
must  insist  on  just  such  sacrifices  when  they  are  necessary 
for  the  good  of  the  whole,  and  must  so  train  its  youth  that 
they  will  be  willing  to  make  them  when  needful. 


THE  SOLUTION  OF  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS  127 

What  is  the  exact  meaning  of  selfishness  and  unselfishness? 

Selfishness  is  the  pursuance  of  one's  own  good  at  the 
expense  of  others.  A  mistaken  idea,  which  it  is  necessary  to 
guard  against,  is  that  selfishness  must  be  conscious,  delib- 
erate. It  is  not  uncommon  for  a  person  accused  of  selfishness 
to  say,  or  think,  "This  is  an  unjust  accusation;  I  have  not 
had  a  selfish  thought!'*  But  unconscious  selfishness  is  by 
far  the  commoner  sort;  millions  of  essentially  good-hearted 
people  are  guilty  of  selfish  acts  through  thoughtlessness  and 
stagnant  sympathy.  Conscious  cruelty  is  rare  compared 
with  moral  insensibility.  It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated 
that  selfishness  is  not  a  way  of  feeling  about  people,  it  is  a 
way  of  acting  toward  them.  To  be  wholly  free  from  selfish 
conduct  necessitates  insight  into  the  needs  and  feelings  of 
others  as  well  as  a  vague  good  will  toward  them.  The  girl 
w^ho  allows  her  mother  to  drudge  that  she  may  have  immac- 
ulate clothes,  the  mother  who  keeps  her  son  at  home  when 
he  ought  to  be  given  the  opportunity  of  a  wider  fife,  is 
conscious  only  of  love;  but  she  is  really  putting  her  own 
happiness  before  that  of  the  loved  one.  The  owner  of  the 
vilest  tenement  houses  is  sometimes  a  generous  and  benevo- 
lent-minded man,  the  luxuriously  rich  are  often  honest  and 
glad  to  confer  favors,  the  pohtical  boss  is  full  of  the  milk  of 
human  kindness;  but  the  superficial  or  adventitious  altruism 
of  such  men  should  not  bhnd  us  to  their  fundamental, 
though  often  entirely  unrealized,  selfishness. 

A  complementary  fallacy  is  that  which  denies  the  epithet 
"unselfish"  to  a  man  who  enjoys  helping  others.  Who  has 
not  heard  the  cynical  remark,  "There's  nothing  unselfish 
about  So-and-So's  benevolence  —  that  is  his  enjoyment  in 
life!"  Such  a  comment  ignores  the  fact  that  the  goal  of 
moral  progress  Hes  precisely  at  the  point  where  we  shall  all 
enjoy  doing  what  it  is  our  duty  to  do.  Altruistic  impulses 


128  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

are  our  own  impulses,  as  well  as  egoistic  ones;  the  distinction 
between  them  lies  not  in  the  pleasure  they  may  give  to  their 
possessor,  or  the  sacrifice  they  may  demand,  but  in  the 
objective  results  they  tend  to  attain.  Happy  is  the  man 
whose  delight  is  in  the  law  of  the  Lord !  Unselfish  action  is, 
in  the  broader  sense,  all  action  that  is  not  selfish;  in  the 
narrower  and  positive  sense,  it  is  all  action  that  tends  to  the 
welfare  of  others  at  the  expense  of  the  narrower  interests  of 
the  individual. 

Are  altruistic  impulses  always  right? 

It  would  be  an  easy  solution  for  our  problems  if  we  could 
say,  "In  every  case  follow  the  altruistic  impulse.'*  But  this 
simplification  is  impossible;  the  ideal  of  service  is  not  such 
an  Open  Sesame  to  our  duty.  And  this  for  several  reasons : — 

(1)  There  are  frequently  clashes  between  altruistic 
impulses.  In  fact,  almost  all  moral  errors  have  some  unself- 
ish impulse  on  their  side  which  helps  to  justify  them  in  the 
eyes  of  the  sinner  and  his  friends.  The  politician  who  gets 
the  best  jobs  for  his  supporters,  the  legislator  who  puts 
through  a  special  statute  to  favor  his  constituents,  the  jingo 
who  helps  push  his  country  into  war  for  its  "honor"  or 
"glory"  —  these  and  a  host  of  other  wrongdoers  are  con- 
scious of  a  genuine  altruistic  glow.  They  ignore  the  fact  that 
they  are  doing,  on  the  whole,  more  harm  than  good  to  others, 
because  the  smaller  group  that  is  apparently  benefited 
looms  larger  to  the  eye  than  the  more  widely  distributed  and 
less  directly  affected  sufferers. 

All  of  our  most  vexing  moral  problems  are  those  in  which 
benefit  to  some  must  be  weighed  against  benefit  to  others. 
Shall  a  man  who  is  needed  by  his  family  risk  his  life  to  save  a 
ne'er-do-well?  Shall  we  insist  that  people  unhappily  married 
shall  endure  their  wretchedness  and  forego  the  possibility 
of  a  happier  union  in  order  that  heedlessness  and  license  may 


THE  SOLUTION  OF  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS  129 

not  be  encourafjcd  in  the  lives  of  others?  Life  is  full  of  such 
two-sided  problems;  it  is  not  enough  that  an  act  may  bring 
good  to  some,  it  must  be  the  act  that  brings  most  good  to 
most. 

(2)  An  apparently  altruistic  act,  dictated  by  sympathy, 
and  productive  of  happiness,  may  not  be  for  the  ultimate 
good  of  the  very  person  made  happy.  To  give  everything 
they  want  to  children  is  inevitably  to  "spoil"  them,  as  we 
rightly  say;  to  spoil  their  own  happiness  in  the  long  run  as 
well  as  their  usefulness  to  others.  To  condone  another's  sin 
and  save  him  the  unpleasantness  of  rebuke  or  the  inflicting 
of  a  penalty  is  often  the  worst  thing  that  could  be  done  to 
him.  To  give  alms  to  a  beggar  may  mean  to  assist  his  moral 
degeneration  and  in  the  long  run  increase  his  misery. 

(3)  Even  when  an  act  superficially  egoistic  conflicts  with 
one  that  seems  altruistic,  the  greatest  good  of  the  community 
often  dictates  the  former.  There  is,  as  Trumbull  used  to 
put  it,  a  "duty  of  refusing  to  do  good."  A  man  who  can 
best  serve  the  common  good  by  concentrating  his  strength 
on  that  work  where  his  particular  ability  or  training  makes 
him  most  effective,  may  be  justified  in  refusing  other  calls 
upon  his  energies,  how^ever  intrinsically  worthy.  An  Edison 
would  be  doing  wrong  to  spend  his  afternoons  in  social 
service,  a  Burbank  has  no  right  to  diminish  his  resources  by 
giving  a  public  library.  Emerson  deserves  our  commenda- 
tion for  refusing  to  be  inveigled  into  the  various  causes  that 
would  have  drafted  his  time  and  strength.  Even  to  the  anti- 
slavery  agitation  he  refused  his  services,  saying,  "I  have 
quite  other  slaves  to  free  than  those  negroes,  to  wit,  impris- 
oned thoughts  far  back  in  the  brain  of  man,  which  have  no 
watchman  or  lover  or  defender  but  me." 

This  brings  us  to  the  question  how  far  a  man  may  legiti- 
mately live  a  self-contained  life.  Certainly  there  is  a 
measure  of  truth  in  Goethe's  saying,  "No  man  can  produce 


130  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

anything  important  unless  he  isolates  himself";  in  Ibsen's 

*'The  most  powerful  man  is  he  who  is  most  alone";  and  in 

Matthew  Arnold's 

"Alone  the  sun  rises,  and  alone 
Spring  the  great  streams." 

A  multiplicity  of  interests  distracts  the  soul  and  often  con- 
fuses our  ideals.  By  keeping  free  from  social  burdens  some 
men,  hke  Kant,  have  accomplished  tasks  of  unusual  magni- 
tude. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  can  match  Goethe's  assertion  with 
another  of  his  own:  **A  talent  forms  itself  in  solitude,  a 
character  in  the  stream  of  the  world."  Isolation  tends 
almost  inevitably  to  narrowness,  to  an  abnormal  and 
cramped  outlook,  to  willfulness  or  Pharisaism,  and  usually 
to  loneliness  and  depression.  The  only  pervasively  happy 
life  for  man  is  the  life  of  cooperation  and  loyalty.  We  may 
well  "withdraw  into  the  silence,"  take  our  daily  communion 
with  God  in  our  closets,  or  our  forty  days  in  the  wilderness, 
to  win  clearer  vision  and  steadier  purpose.  But  solitude 
should,  in  normal  cases,  be  only  an  interlude  of  rest,  or  a 
quiet  maturing  for  service.  The  ideal  is  perhaps  expressed 
in  Wordsworth's  sonnet  on  Milton:  — 

**Thy  soul  was  like  a  star  and  dwelt  apart. 
....  And  yet  thy  heart 
The  lowliest  duties  on  herself  did  lay." 

The  organization  of  life  implies  a  criticism  of  and  control 
over  altruistic  as  well  as  egoistic  impulses.  There  is  nothing 
inherent  in  the  fact  of  a  good  being  others'  good  to  make  it 
necessarily  the  greatest  good  in  a  given  situation.  The 
ultimate  criterion  must  always  be  the  greatest  good  of  the 
greatest  number;  but  an  altruistic  as  well  as  an  egoistic 
impulse  may  stand  in  the  way  of  that  end.  Our  altruistic 
inclinations  are  often  perverted,  non-representative,  a 
matter  of  instinctive  and  irrational  sympathy  or  short- 


THE  SOLUTION  OF  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS  131 

sighted  impulse.  And  so,  while  one  of  the  great  tasks  of 
moral  education  is  to  make  men  unselfish,  that  alone  is  not 
enough;  unselfishness  must  be  directed  by  reason  and  tact, 
rendered  far-sighted  and  intelligent. 

What  mental  and  moral  obstacles  hinder  altruistic  action? 

Although  an  altruistic  impulse  is  not  necessarily  a  right 
impulse  to  follow,  there  are  a  great  many  altruistic  duties 
which  are  clear  and  summoning;  and  it  is  a  never  ending 
disappointment  to  the  man  of  social  conscience  to  behold 
the  apathy  wherewith  obvious  social  duties  are  regarded. 
It  will  be  worth  while  to  pause  and  note  the  chief  mental 
and  moral  obstacles  that  prevent  a  more  general  devotion 
to  social  betterment. 

(1)  The  most  formidable  obstacle,  perhaps,  is  the  selfish- 
ness of  those  who  are  themselves  well  enough  off.  Our 
cities,  and  even,  to  some  extent,  our  small  towns,  grow  up  in 
"quarters";  the  rich  living  in  one  district  and  the  poor  in 
another.  This  permits  the  suffering  of  the  latter  to  go  un- 
known or  only  half-realized  by  the  former.  The  well-to-do 
have  many  interests  and  many  pleasant  uses  for  their  money; 
the  call  of  the  unfortunate  —  "Come  over  and  help  us! "  — 
rings  faint  and  far  away  in  their  ears.  Or  they  may  excuse 
their  callousness  by  the  assertion  that  the  poor  are  used  to 
their  evil  living  conditions,  do  not  mind  them,  and  are  as 
contented,  on  the  whole,  as  the  rich;  complacently  ignoring 
the  fact  that  being  used  to  conditions  is  not  the  same  as 
enjoying  or  profiting  by  them,  and  that  contentment  by  no 
means  implies  a  useful  or  desirable  life.  It  is  true  that  the 
needy  are  often  but  dimly  conscious  of  their  needs;  in  that 
very  fact  lies  a  reason  why  the  favored  classes  should  rouse 
them  out  of  their  dullness,  save  them  from  the  physical  and 
moral  degeneration  into  which  they  so  unconsciously  and 
helplessly  drift.  The  indifference  of  the  fortunate  comes  not 


132  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

so  often  from  a  deliberate  hardening  of  the  heart  as  from  a 
lack  of  contact  with  the  needy  or  imagination  to  picture 
their  destitution.  But  blame  must  rest  upon  all  comfortable 
citizens  who  do  not  bestir  themselves  to  help  in  social  better- 
ment because  it  is  too  much  trouble  or  requires  a  sacrifice 
they  are  not  willing  to  make. 

(2)  Another  serious  obstacle  lies  in  the  distrust  with 
which  many  people  regard  any  duty  which  they  have  not 
been  accustomed  to  regard  as  a  duty.  This  may  take  the 
form  of  an  overdeveloped  loyalty,  that  bows  before  the 
sacredness  of  existing  institutions  and  labels  any  reform  as 
"unconstitutional,"  a  departure  from  the  ways  that  were 
good  enough  for  our  fathers.  It  may  wear  the  guise  of  a 
lazy  piety  that  would  leave  everj^thing  with  God,  accepting 
social  ills  as  manifestations  of  his  will,  and  interference  as 
a  sort  of  arrogant  presumption!  It  may  be  a  mere  mental 
apathy,  an  inertia  of  habit,  that  sees  no  call  for  a  better 
water-supply  or  bothersome  laws  about  the  purity  of  milk. 
Or  it  may  defend  itself  by  pointing  out  the  uncertainties 
that  attend  untried  ways  and  warning  against  the  danger  of 
experimentation.  To  these  warnings  we  may  reply  that  our 
altruistic  zeal  must,  indeed,  be  coupled  with  accurate  think- 
ing; unless  we  have  based  our  proposals  on  wide  observation 
and  cautious  inference  we  may  find  unexpected  and  baneful 
results  in  the  place  of  our  sanguine  expectations.  But  we 
may  point  out  that  it  is  "nothing  venture  nothing  have"; 
we  cannot  work  out  our  social  salvation  without  experi- 
menting; and,  after  all,  ways  that  do  not  work  well  can 
readily  be  discontinued.  What  is  vital  is  to  keep  alive  an 
intolerance  of  apathy  and  contentment,  to  realize  that  we 
are  hardly  more  than  on  the  threshold  of  a  rational  civili- 
zation, to  recognize  evils,  cherish  ideals,  and  maintain  our 
determination  in  some  way  to  actualize  them. 

(3)  A  further  steady  damper  upon  our  altruistic  zeal  is  the 


THE  SOLUTION  OF  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS  133 

dread  of  raising  the  taxes.  Humanitarian  movements  are 
well  enough,  but  they  cost  so  much !  What  is  needful  is 
to  point  out  that  poverty,  unemployment,  disease,  and  the 
other  social  ills  are  also  costly;  indeed,  they  cost  the  public 
in  the  long  run  far  more  than  the  expenditure  necessary  for 
their  abolition  or  alleviation.  It  pays  in  dollars  and  cents, 
within  a  generation  or  two  at  least,  to  make  and  keep  the 
social  organism  sound.  A  wise  altruism  is  not  merely  a  mat- 
ter of  philanthropy;  it  is  also  a  matter  of  economy;  a  means 
of  saving  individuals  from  suffering,  but  at  the  same  time  a 
means  of  safeguarding  the  public  treasury.  If  the  commun- 
ity does  not  pay  for  the  curing  of  these  evils  it  will  have  to 
pay  for  their  results.  "It  seems  to  me  essentially  fallacious 
to  look  upon  such  expenditures  as  indulgences  to  be  allowed 
rather  sparingly  to  such  communities  as  are  rich  enough  to 
afford  them.  They  are  literally  a  husbanding  of  resources, 
a  safeguard  against  later  unprofitable  but  compulsory 
expenditure,  a  repair  in  the  social  organism  which,  like  the 
repair  of  a  leaky  roof,  may  avert  disaster.'*^  The  public 
must  be  educated  to  see  the  wisdom  of  investing  heavily  in 
long-neglected  social  repairs  and  reconstruction,  which  in 
the  end  will  far  more  than  pay  for  itself  in  the  lowering  of 
expenses  for  police,  courts,  prisons,  hospitals,  asylums,  and 
almshouses,  in  the  lowered  death-rate,  immunity  from  costly 
disease,  and  increased  working  capacity  of  the  people. 

(4)  Finally,  a  hopelessness  of  accomplishing  anything 
often  paralyzes  our  zeal.  This  sometimes  takes  the  form  of 
a  more  or  less  honest  conviction  that  poverty,  unemploy- 
ment, and  other  maladjustments  are  simply  the  result  of 
moral  degeneration  —  of  the  laziness,  extravagance,  drink- 
ing, or  other  wrongdoing  of  the  poor;  their  suffering  is  their 
own  fault,  and  they  must  be  left  to  endure  it.  Of  course 
such  factors  often  —  though  by  no  means  always  —  enter 
*  E.  T.  Devine,  Misery  and  its  Causes,  p.  £72. 


134  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

in.  One  may  well  say,  "Who  are  we  of  the  upper  classes  to 
throw  the  first  stone?"  Under  like  conditions  most  of  us 
would  have  become  as  discouraged  or  demoralized,  yielded 
to  the  consolation  of  some  vice,  or  balked  at  the  monotonous 
grind  of  factory  labor.  But  however  that  may  be,  in  so  far 
as  social  evils  are  due  to  these  faults,  the  faults  must  be 
attacked,  not  accepted  as  inevitable  and  incurable.  The 
pressure  that  pushes  men  into  them  must  be  eased,  the 
ignorance  and  foolishness  that  foster  them  must  be  dissi- 
pated by  education  and  moral  training.  And  for  all  the 
social  maladjustments  that  are  not  due  to  vice  and  sin,  other 
remedies  must  be  found.  The  road  to  social  salvation  is  long 
and  beset  with  many  diflficulties,  but  the  goal  is  not  hopeless 
of  attainment;  and  every  step  toward  the  goal  is  so  much 
gain.  Because  we  cannot  now  see  how  to  remedy  all  evils 
must  not  be  a  pretext  for  refusing  to  lend  a  hand  to  move- 
ments that  are  of  proved  value. 

How  can  we  reconcile  egoism  and  altruism? 

Although  altruism  is  usually  wise  from  the  individual's 
own  standpoint,  it  does  not  always  seem  so.  The  commonest 
moral  clash  is  between  the  individual's  apparent  good  and 
that  of  others;  the  cases  in  which  one  man's  position,  wealth, 
success  precludes  another's  are  everyday  occurrences. 
Must  this  conflict  be  eternal?  Is  there  any  way  of  reconcil- 
ing these  opposing  interests  except  by  an  unhappy  and 
regrettable  sacrifice?  Must  life  be  a  perpetual  compromise, 
a  "social  contract,"  a  treaty  to  make  reciprocal  concessions, 
with  every  one's  real  interests  at  war  with  every  one  else's? 
Certainly  the  altruistic  summons  cannot  be  ignored;  we 
cannot  all  follow  our  egoistic  impulses;  in  the  common  dis- 
aster we  should  be  individually  involved.  And,  indeed,  the 
altruistic  impulses  have  become  so  deeply  rooted  in  our 
natures  that,  turn  away  from  them  as  we  might,  they  would 


THE  SOLUTION  OF  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS  1S5 

yet  persist  in  the  form  of  an  undercurrent  of  dissatisfaction 
and  remorse.  The  only  possible  solution  of  the  deadlock  lies 
in  the  kilhng-off  of  the  selfish  impulses. 

This  is  not  a  fantastic  dream.  We  see  in  the  ideal  mother, 
father,  husband,  wife,  in  the  ardent  patriot  and  religious 
devotee,  this  sloughing-off  of  the  egoistic  nature  already 
accomplished.  Love,  and  joy  in  service,  are  not  alien  to  us; 
they  are  as  instinctive  as  self-seeking;  the  hope  of  ultimate 
peace  hes  in  the  strengthening  of  these  impulses  till  they  so 
dominate  us  that  we  no  longer  care  for  the  selfish  and  narrow 
aims.  We  must  cultivate  the  masculine  aspect  of  unselfish- 
ness, the  loyalty  of  the  Greeks,  the  impulse  to  stand  by  and 
fight  for  others;  and  we  must  cultivate  its  more  feminine 
side,  the  caritas  of  I  Corinthians  xiii,  the  love  that  suflereth 
long  and  is  kind,  the  sympathy  and  tenderness  infused  into 
a  rough  and  rugged  world  by  Christianity.  In  this  highest 
developed  life  there  will  then  be  no  dualism  of  motive;  at  the 
top  of  the  ladder  of  moral  progress  individual  and  social 
goods  coincide.  It  is  joy  to  the  righteous  to  do  righteousness; 
it  is  the  keenest  delight  in  life  for  the  lover  of  men  to  serve. 

The  unselfish  impulse  has  thus  a  double  value;  it  blesseth 
him  that  gives  and  him  that  takes.  It  is  more  blessed  to  give 
than  to  receive,  when  the  giver  has  reached  the  moral  level 
where  giving  is  his  greatest  joy.  The  development  of  sym- 
pathy and  the  spirit  of  service  in  modern  times  gives  great 
hope  that  the  time  will  come  when  men  will  universally  find 
a  rich  and  satisfying  life  in  ways  which  bring  no  harm  but 
only  good  to  others. 

H.  Spencer,  Data  of  Ethics,  chaps,  xi-xiv.  R.  B.  Perrj%  Moral 
Economy,  chap,  n,  sees,  iv,  v.;  chap,  iii.,  sees,  v,  vi.  F.  Paulsen, 
System  of  Ethics,  bk.  ii,  chap,  i,  sec.  6;  chap,  vi;  bk.  m,  chap,  x, 
sec.  1.  Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics,  chap,  xvni,  sec.  e.  W.  K. 
Clifford,  Right  and  Wrong,  On  tJie  Scientific  Basis  of  Morals,  in 
Lectures  and  Essays,  vol.  u.  R.  M.  McConnell,  Duty  of  Altrvism. 
B.  Russell,  Philosophical  Essays,  chap,  i,  sec.  v.  J.  Royce,  Prob- 
lem of  Christianity,  vol.  i,  chap.  ni. 


CHAPTER  XII 

OBJECTIONS  AND  MISUNDERSTANDINGS 

Having  now  outlined  the  eudsemonistic  account  of  moral- 
ity, we  may  note  certain  objections  that  are  commonly 
raised  to  it,  and  certain  misunderstandings  that  constantly 
recur. 

Do  men  always  act  for  pleasure  or  to  avoid  pain? 

Many  of  the  earlier  theorists,  not  content  with  sho^ang 
that  the  good  consists  ultimately  in  a  quality  of  conscious 
states,  asserted  that  all  of  men's  actions  are  actually  directed 
toward  the  attainment  of  agreeable  states  of  experience  or 
avoidance  of  disagreeable  states.  There  is  no  act  but  is 
aimed  for  pleasure  of  some  sort  or  away  from  pain;  men 
differ,  then,  only  in  their  wisdom  in  selecting  the  more 
important  pleasures  and  their  skill  in  attaining  what  they 
aim  for.  This  assertion,  easily  refuted,  has  seemed  to  some 
opponents  of  the  eudsemonistic  account  of  morality  so  bound 
up  with  it  as  to  involve  its  downfall. 

The  classic  statement  of  this  erroneous  psychology,  which 
has  been  the  source  of  much  satisfaction  to  anti-eudsemonis- 
tic  philosophers,  is  to  be  found  in  the  fourth  chapter  of 
Mill's  Utilitarianism.  *' There  is  in  reality  nothing  desired 
except  happiness.  Whatever  is  desired  otherwise  than  as  a 
means  to  some  end  beyond  itself,  and  ultimately  to  happi- 
ness, is  desired  as  itself  a  part  of  happiness,  and  is  not  desired 
for  itself  until  it  has  become  so.  .  .  .  Human  nature  is  so 
constituted  as  to  desire  nothing  which  is  not  either  a  part  of 
happiness  or  a  means  to  happiness.  ..."  A  careful  reading 


OBJECTIONS   AND   MISUNDERSTANDINGS  137 

of  Mill  shows  that  he  did  not  mean  these  statements  without 
qualification.  But  since  they,  and  similar  sweeping  asser- 
tions, ^  have  been  a  stumbling-block  to  many,  we  must  pause 
to  note  their  inaccuracy,  while  insisting  that  they  are  no 
part  of  a  sound  utilitarian,  or  eudtjemonistic,  theory. 

Far  from  the  desire  for  happiness  being  the  universal 
motive,  it  is  one  of  the  less  common  springs  of  conduct. 
Habit,  inertia,  instinct,  ideals  drive  us  this  way  and  that; 
we  do  a  thousand  things  daily  without  any  thought  of  hap- 
piness, because  our  minds  are  so  made  that  they  naturally 
run  off  into  such  action.  We  desire  concrete  things,  without 
reference  to  their  bearing  on  our  happiness.  We  even  go 
directly  and  consciously  counter  to  our  happiness  at  times, 
deliberately  sacrifice  it,  perhaps  for  some  foolish  fancy.  The 
idealist  in  politics  expects  to  get  no  pleasure  out  of  what  his 
associates  deem  his  pigheadedness;  but  he  has  seen  a  vision 
and  he  keeps  true  to  it.  Regulus  did  not  go  back  to  Carthage 
to  be  tortured  to  death  for  the  pleasure  of  it,  or  to  avoid  the 
greater  pain  of  an  uneasy  conscience;  he  went  in  spite  of 
foreseen  pain  and  the  allurement  of  possible  pleasure.  When 
a  man  endures  privations  for  the  sake  of  posthumous  fame, 
it  is  not  that  he  expects  to  enjoy  that  fame  when  it  comes, 
or  expects  others  to  enjoy  it;  he  is  simply  so  made  that  he 
cannot  resist  the  sway  of  that  ambition  which  will  bring 
him  no  good.  The  pursuit  of  pleasure  is  a  sophisticated 
impulse  which  appears  in  marked  degree  only  in  a  few  self- 
conscious  and  idle  individuals. 

William  James  gave  the  death-blow  to  this  pleasure- 
seeking  psychology.  "Important  as  is  the  influence  of 
pleasures  and  pains  upon  our  movements,  they  are  far  from 

*  Cf.  Leslie  Stephen,  Science  of  Ethics,  p.  44:  "The  love  of  happiness  must 
express  the  sole  possible  motive  of  Judas  Iscariot  and  of  his  Master;  it  must 
explain  the  conduct  of  Stylites  on  his  pillar,  of  Tiberius  at  Capra?,  of  a 
Kempis  in  his  ceU,  and  of  Nelson  in  the  cockpit  of  the  Victory. 


138  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

being  our  only  stimuli.  With  tlie  manifestations  of  instinct 
and  emotional  expression,  for  example,  they  have  absolutely 
nothing  to  do.  Who  smiles  for  the  pleasure  of  smiling,  or 
frowns  for  the  pleasure  of  the  frown?  Who  blushes  to  escape 
the  discomfort  of  not  blushing?  Or  who  in  anger,  grief,  or 
fear  is  actuated  to  the  movements  which  he  makes  by  the 
pleasures  which  they  yield?  In  all  these  cases  the  movements 
are  discharged  fatally  by  the  vis  a  tergo  which  the  stimulus 
exerts  upon  a  nervous  system  framed  to  respond  in  just  that 
way.  .  .  .  The  impulsive  quality  of  mental  states  is  an 
attribute  behind  which  we  cannot  go."^ 

It  is  not  true,  then,  that  love  of  pleasure  and  fear  of  pain 
are  the  universal  motives.  It  is  not  true  that  we  inevitably 
act  along  the  line  of  least  hedonic  resistance,  that  pain 
necessarily  veers  us  off  and  pleasure  irresistibly  attracts. 
By  force  of  will,  by  "suggestion"  or  training,  we  can  go 
directly  counter  to  the  pull  of  pleasure.  It  is  true  that  we 
should  not  have  the  instincts  and  habits  and  impulses  that 
we  do  were  they  not  in  general  useful  for  our  existence  or 
happiness.  But  the  evolutionary  process  has  been  clumsy; 
we  are  not  properly  adjusted;  we  become  the  victims  of 
idees  fixes;  ideas  and  activities  obsess  us  quite  without 
relation  to  their  hedonic  value.  So  pleasure  and  pain  are  not 
usually  the  impelling  force  or  conscious  motive  behind  con- 
duct. What  they  are  is  —  the  touchstone,  the  criterion,  the 
justification. 

We  do  not  act  in  ways  that  bring  the  greatest  happiness, 
but  we  ought  to.  We  do  not  consciously  seek  happiness, 
and  we  ought  not  to.  We  ought  to  continue  to  care  for 
things  and  for  ideals;  but  the  things  and  ideals  we  care  and 
work  for  ought  to  be  such  that  through  them  man's  welfare 
is  advanced. 

*  W.  James,  Psychology,  vol.  ii,  p.  550. 


OBJECTIONS  AND  MISUNDERSTANDINGS  139 

Are  pleasures  and  pains  inconunensurable? 

An  objection  commonly  raised  is  that  pleasures  and  pains 
of  various  sorts  are  incommensurable;  that  therefore  no 
calculation  of  relative  advantage  is  possible;  and  that  the 
eudsemonistic  criterion  for  action  is  thereby  made  impracti- 
cable and  useless. 

(1)  To  this  we  may  reply  that  the  estimation  of  the  rela- 
tive worth  of  different  kinds  of  experience  is,  indeed,  often 
very  difficult.  But  on  any  theory  the  decision  as  to  the  right 
is  equally  complicated  and  puzzling.  The  fact  that  the  cri- 
terion is  difficult  to  use  is  no  evidence  that  it  is  not  the  right 
criterion.  Which  set  of  consequences  will  be  of  most 
intrinsic  worth,  it  is  sometimes  impossible  to  know.  But  one 
set  is,  nevertheless,  of  more  intrinsic  worth,  and  the  act  that 
secures  them  is  the  best  act,  even  though  we  do  not  recog- 
nize it  as  such.  There  will  continue  to  be  many  differences 
of  judgment  as  to  which  of  alternative  possible  experiences 
is  the  more  desirable.  But  that  uncertainty  does  not  alter 
the  fundamental  fact  that  some  experiences  are  intrinsically 
more  desirable  than  others  and  more  deserving  of  pursuit. 

"A  debtor  who  cannot  pay  me  offers  to  compound  for  his 
debt  by  making  over  one  of  sundry  things  he  possesses  — ■ 
a  diamond  ornament,  a  silver  vase,  a  picture,  a  carriage. 
Other  questions  being  set  aside,  I  assert  it  to  be  my  pecuni- 
ary interest  to  choose  the  most  valuable  of  these,  but  I 
cannot  say  which  is  the  most  valuable.  Does  the  proposition 
that  it  is  my  pecuniary  interest  to  choose  the  most  valuable, 
therefore,  become  doubtful?  Must  I  not  choose  as  well  as  I 
can,  and  if  I  choose  wrongly,  must  I  give  up  my  ground  of 
choice?  Must  I  infer  that  in  matters  of  business  I  may  not 
act  on  the  principle  that,  other  things  equal,  the  more  profit- 
able transaction  is  to  be  preferred,  because,  in  many  cases,  I 
cannot  say  which  is  the  more  profitable  and  have  often 


140  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

chosen  the  less  profitable?  Because  I  believe  that  of  many 
dangerous  courses  I  ought  to  take  the  least  dangerous,  do  I 
make  *the  fundamental  assumption'  that  courses  can  be 
arranged  according  to  a  scale  of  dangerousness,  and  must  I 
abandon  my  belief  if  I  cannot  so  arrange  them?"^ 

(2)  If  it  is  practically  impossible  to  calculate  the  relative 
worth  of  consequences  in  many  cases,  it  is  yet  easy  enough 
to  do  so  in  the  great  majority  of  moral  situations.  In  most 
cases  the  preponderance  of  value  is  clear.  That  selfishness 
and  self-indulgence  are  not  worth  while;  that  abstinence 
from  pleasure-giving  drugs  and  intoxicating  liquors  is  worth 
the  sacrifice;  that  truth  and  honesty,  the  law-abiding  spirit, 
the  spirit  of  service,  friendliness  and  courtesy,  sanitary 
measures,  incorruptible  courts,  and  a  thousand  other  things 
are  worth  the  effort  and  cost  of  acquiring  them,  is  indisput- 
able. It  is  only  in  some  peculiarly  balanced  situations  that 
we  find  practical  difficulty  in  deciding.  If  morality  were 
limited  to  the  cases  where  we  can  be  sure  on  which  side  the 
greater  good  or  lesser  evil  lies,  we  should  not  be  shorn  of 
much  of  our  present  code. 

(3)  It  would,  of  course,  be  impracticable  to  stop  and  calcu- 
late at  the  moment  when  action  is  needed.  But  such  con- 
tinual recalculation  is  unnecessary.  Our  ancestors,  after 
many  experiments,  have  found  solutions  for  all  the  familiar 
types  of  situation;  the  results  of  their  thought  are  crystal- 
lized for  us  in  the  ideals  that  press  upon  us  from  without  and 
the  voice  of  conscience  that  calls  to  us  within.  Forces  be- 
yond the  individual  human  mind  have  taken  care  of  these 
things  and  slowly  steered  man,  with  all  his  passions  and 
caprices,  toward  his  own  better  welfare.  It  is  only  in  mo- 
ments when  we  long  to  understand  and  justify  our  ideals, 
or  when  some  unusually  baffling  problem  arises,  that  we 
need  to  calculate  and  weigh  relative  advantage  and  di.'^- 

^  H.  Spencer,  Data  of  Ethics,  chap.  ix. 


OBJECTIONS  AND   MISUNDERSTANDINGS  Ul 

advantage.    And  that  is  what,  in  such  situations,  most 
people  do. 

Are  some  pleasures  worthier  than  others? 

Undiscriminating  critics  have  often  condemned  the 
eudsemonistic  criterion  on  the  ground  that  any  sort  of 
pleasure  is  rated  equally  high  on  its  scale  so  long  as  it  is 
pleasure.  "Pushpin  as  good  as  poetry!"  seems  to  some  the 
height  of  sarcasm.  Socrates  says  in  the  PhilebuSy  "Do  we 
not  say  that  the  intemperate  has  pleasure,  and  that  the 
temperate  has  pleasure  in  his  very  temperance,  and  that 
the  fool  is  pleased  when  he  is  full  of  foolish  fancies  and 
hopes,  and  that  the  wise  man  has  pleasure  in  his  wisdom? 
And  may  not  he  be  justly  deemed  a  fool  who  says  that  these 
pairs  of  pleasures  are  respectively  alike?" 

Why,  however,  do  we  rate  the  pleasures  of  temperance 
and  wisdom  above  those  of  intemperance  and  folly?  Simply 
because  of  their  respective  effects.  Intrinsically  they  may 
be  equally  desirable,  or  the  latter  may  even  be  keener 
pleasures — that  depends  upon  the  individual  circumstances; 
but  there  is  no  question  about  their  relative  extrinsic  value. 
There  is  always  "the  devil  to  pay"  for  intemperance  and 
folly;  while  temperance  and  wisdom  lead  to  health,  love, 
honor,  achievement,  and  many  another  good.  As  to  push- 
pin —  or  let  us  say  baseball  —  versus  poetry,  it  is  only 
prejudice  that  makes  us  say  we  rate  the  latter  higher. 
Outdoor  games  are  not  only  productive  of  a  keener  delight 
to  most  people,  they  are  extriusically  good  as  well,  conduc- 
ing to  health,  quickness  of  wit,  self-control,  and  other  goods. 
They  arey  in  their  time  and  place,  as  good  as  poetry.  The 
reason  for  the  greater  reverence  we  feel,  or  feel  we  ought  to 
feel,  for  poetry  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  takes  much  more  men- 
tal cultivation  to  acquire  the  taste  for  it;  the  love  of  poetry 
is  a  sort  of  patrician  distinction.   It  is  also  true  that  poetry 


142  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

opens  up  to  its  lover  a  much  wider  range  of  enjoyments;  it 
opens  his  eyes  to  the  beauty  and  significance  and  pathos  in 
the  world;  it  is  immensely  educative,  and  inspiring  to  the 
spiritual  life.  The  love  of  broadening  and  inspiring  things 
requires  cultivation  in  most  of  us;  so  that  we  praise  and 
honor  such  things  and  urge  people  toward  them.  Pushpin, 
or  baseball,  needs  no  apotheosis.  But  if  we  ever  develop 
into  a  race  of  anaemic  bookworms,  we  shall  have  to  glorify 
sport  and  learn  to  shrug  our  shoulders  at  the  soft  and  easy 
enjoyments  of  poetry.  Nothing  is  more  obvious  than  the 
utilitarian  nature  of  such  habitual  judgments  and  attitudes. 

One  of  the  Platonic  illustrations,  often  brought  up,  is  that 
of  the  happy  oyster.^  Who  would  wish,  however  miserable, 
to  exchange  places  with  it !  Are  there  not  other  things  to  be 
considered  besides  happiness?  "It  is  better  to  be  a  Socrates 
dissatisfied  than  a  fool  satisfied.** 

And  why?  In  the  first  place,  we  suspect  that  the  oyster's, 
or  even  the  fool's,  range  of  happiness  is  very  limited.  We 
should  hesitate  to  forego  such  joys  as  we  do  have,  even  if 
sorrow  attends  them,  at  so  great  a  sacrifice.  In  the  second 
place,  each  of  us  has  a  deep-rooted  love  of  his  own  personal 
memories  and  expectations;  and  except  in  cases  of  unusual 
depression  of  spirits  few  of  us  would  wish  to  lose  our  identity 
and  become  some  other  person  or  thing  even  if  we  knew  that 
other  being  to  be  happier.  In  the  third  place,  a  man  knows 
he  could  not  be  happier  as  an  oyster;  an  oyster's  joys  (what- 
ever they  may  be)  would  not  satisfy  him;  he  has  other  needs 
and  desires.  He  must  find  happiness,  if  at  all,  in  the  satis- 
faction of  his  human  cravings.   The  oyster's  life,  however 

1  Philebus,  22.  "Is  such  a  life  eligible?"  asks  Socrates.  Later  (40),  he 
agrees  that  "a  man  must  be  admitted  to  have  real  pleasure  who  is  pleased 
with  anything  or  anyhow,"  but  asks  if  it  is  not  true  that  some  pleasures  are 
"false."  Protarchus  hits  the  nail  on  the  head  by  replying,  "No  one  would 
call  jileasures  bad  because  they  are  'false,'  but  by  reason  of  some  other  great 
evil  to  which  they  are  liable"  i.e.,  because  of  their  after-efiFects. 


OBJECTIONS  AND   MISUNDERSTANDINGS  14A 

satisfactory  to  the  oyster,  would  leave  him  restless  and 
bored.  If  you  are  a  Socrates,  you  realize  similarly  that  you 
could  not  find  satisfaction  in  the  fool's  life.  You  know  that 
although  you  have  sorrows  the  fool  wots  not  of,  you  also 
have  a  whole  range  of  joys  beyond  his  ken;  and  those  joys 
are  particularly  precious  to  you.  In  the  fourth  place,  the 
very  words  "oyster"  and  "fool"  beg  the  question.  "Fool** 
means  by  very  definition  a  sort  of  person  one  would  not 
choose  to  be;  and  the  very  vizualization  of  an  oyster  is 
repellent.  Were  one  to  offer  as  the  alternative  a  happy 
lion  or  eagle;  or  a  happy,  free-hearted  savage  such  as 
Chateaubriand  and  Rousseau  painted,  one  suspects  that 
not  a  few  suffering  men  and  women  would  jump  at  the 
chance. 

It  is  not  really  important  to  decide,  however,  what  any 
one  would  choose.  Our  choices  are  biased  and  often  foolish. 
The  actual  question  is,  Is  the  happiness  of  a  fool,  or  of  an 
oyster  (if  happiness  it  has)  as  worthy,  as  objectively  desir- 
able, as  that  of  a  wise  man?  And  here  again  we  have  to  say, 
not  extrinsically  so  desirable.  The  wise  man  is  he  who  finds 
his  happiness  in  activities  that  conduce  to  his  ultimate  wel- 
fare and  that  of  others.  The  happiness  of  fool  or  oyster  is 
transitory,  blind,  and  fraught  with  unseen  dangers;  it  is  of 
no  value  to  the  community  in  which  they  live.  But  intrinsi- 
cally, just  qua  happiness,  it  is  —  if  it  is  —  as  good.  What 
makes  one  form  of  happiness  more  worthy  than  another  is 
simply,  in  the  first  place,  its  greater  keenness  or  extent  or 
freedom  from  pain,  and  in  the  second  place  its  potentiahties 
of  future  happiness  or  pain  for  self  and  others. 

When  Mill  wrote,  therefore,  in  his  classic  treatise,  that 
"some  kinds  of  pleasure  are  more  desirable  and  valuable 
than  others,"  he  showed  a  —  for  him  unusual  —  failure  to 
analyze.  Some  kinds  of  pleasures  are  more  desirable,  for  the 
reasons  summarized  above.   But  pleasure,  in  the  abstract, 


144  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

pleasantness,  agreeableness,  intrinsic  worth,  whatever  you 
choose  to  call  it,  is  itself  a  quality ;  there  can  be  more  or  less 
of  it  in  a  concrete  experience,  that  is  all.  To  speak  of  kinds 
of  pleasure  is  to  mean  kinds  of  experience  which  have  the 
common  attribute  of  pleasantness.  In  themselves  all  kinds 
of  experience  that  are  equally  pleasant  are  equally  worthy; 
tliere  is  no  meaning  to  that  adjective  as  applied  to  intrinsic 
immediate  good.  ** Worthy"  and  "unworthy"  apply  to 
experiences  only  when  we  begin  to  consider  their  conse- 
quences. 

Is  morality  merely  subjective  and  relative? 

Different  people  find  happiness  in  different  ways;  if  moral- 
ity is  simply  the  means  to  happiness,  is  it  not  relative  to 
their  varying  desires;  is  it  not  a  purely  subjective  matter 
and  without  a  fixed  objective  nature? 

We  must  discriminate.  Morality  is  not  relative  to  our 
inclinations  and  desires,  because  those  often  do  not  rightly 
represent  our  own  true  welfare,  still  less  the  general  welfare. 
Happiness  is  desirable  whether  our  impulses  are  adjusted  so 
as  to  aim  for  it  or  not.  Nor  is  morality  relative  to  our 
opinions;  an  act  may  be  wrong  though  the  whole  world 
proclaim  it  right.  It  is  a  matter  not  of  opinion  but  of  fact 
whether  an  act  is  going  to  bring  the  greatest  attainable 
welfare  or  not.  However  biased  and  short-sighted  we  may 
be,  the  consequences  of  acts  will  be  what  they  will  be.  In  a 
very  real  sense,  then,  morality  is  objective;  it  is  valid  whether 
we  recognize  its  validity  and  want  it  or  not.  It  represents 
our  needs  more  truly  than  our  own  wills,  and  thus  has  a 
greater  authority,  just  as  the  rules  of  dietetics  are  not  a 
matter  of  appetite  or  whim,  but  have  a  rational  authority 
over  our  caprices.  Morality  is  not,  like  imagination,  some- 
thing we  can  shape  at  will;  it  is  imposed  upon  us  from  with- 
out, like  sensation.    Its  development  is  predetermined  by 


OB.TECTIONS  AND   MISUNDERSTANDINGS  145 

the  structure  of  human  nature  and  its  environment;  we  do 
not  invent  it,  we  accept  it.^ 

But  although  imposed  upon  our  restive  impulses,  it  is  not 
imposed  by  any  alien  and  arbitrary  will.  It  is  imposed  by 
the  same  cosmos  that  set  our  consciousness  into  relation 
with  a  given  kind  of  body  in  a  given  world.  Submission  to 
it  is  simply  sul^mission  to  the  laws  of  our  own  natures. 
Lasting  happiness  can  be  found  only  in  certain  ways;  we 
must  make  the  best  of  it,  but  it  is  for  our  own  good  that  we 
obey.  MoraUty  is  relative  to  our  organic  needs  and  particu- 
lar environment.  It  is  a  function  of  human  nature,  varying 
with  its  variations,  ^^diiferent  race  of  beings  on  another 
planet  might  have  to  have  a  very  radically  ditterent  coder 

~Dursis  a  distinctively  human  code,  bearing  the  eanuarks  of- 
our  humanity  and  stamped  wrtlithe  particular  nature  of  ouF 

"earth-life^  "  "^         ^  """^  "" 

'I'o  say  this  is  to  admit  that  morality  varies  with  different 
temperaments  and  different  needs.  What  is  best  for  one 
person  is  not  necessarily  best  for  another;  what  is  right  for 
an  early  stage  of  civilization  is  not  always  right  for  a  later. 
The  patriarchal  family  was  a  source  of  strength  in  primitive 
society;  to-day  it  would  be  a  needless  tyranny.  Life  in  a 
tropical  isle  frees  man  from  the  necessity  of  many  virtues 
which  a  more  rigorous  climate  entails.  The  poet  needs  to 
live  in  a  different  way  from  the  coal-heaver.  Just  so  far  as 
our  individual  and  racial  needs  vary  —  our  real  needs,  not 
our  supposed  needs  and  pathological  desires  (and  always 

*  Cf.  Cudworth  (ca.  1G88),  Treatise,  chap,  n,  sec.  3:  "It  is  so  far  from 
being  true  that  all  moral  good  and  evil,  just  and  unjust,  are  mere  arbitrary 
and  factitious  things,  that  are  created  wholly  by  will,  that  (if  we  would 
speak  properly)  we  must  needs  say  that  nothing  is  morally  good  or  evil,  just 
or  unjust,  by  mere  will  without  nature,  because  everything  is  what  it  is  by 
nature,  and  not  by  will." 

A  good  recent  discussion  bearing  upon  the  question  of  the  relativity 
of  morality  will  be  found  in  Santayana's  Winds  of  Doctrine,  pp.  138-154. 


146  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

bearing  in  mind  the  needs  of  others)  —  just  so  far  is  what  is 
right  for  one  different  from  what  is  right  for  another.  This 
is  no  condemnation  of  eudsemonistic  morality.  On  the  con- 
trary, a  clear  recognition  of  this  truth  would  happily  relax 
the  sometimes  over-rigid  conventions  of  society,  its  cut-and- 
dried-made-on-one-pattern  code,  and  make  it  more  elastic 
and  suitable  to  individual  needs. 

However,  we  are  not  so  different  from  one  another  as  we 
are  apt  to  think.  The  extenuation  of  sin  on  the  plea  that  the 
"artistic  temperament"  demands  this,  or  a  "sensitive 
nature"  needs  that,  is  much  overdone.  Differences  in  tem- 
perament are  superficial  compared  with  the  miles  of  under- 
lying strata  of  plain  human  nature.  "A  man's  a  man  for  a' 
that,"  and  must  submit  to  the  rules  for  human  life.  The 
man  of  "artistic  temperament"  does  not  know  himself  well 
enough.  He  feels  superficial  and  transient  cravings;  he 
ignores  his  underlying  needs,  and  the  fundamental  duties 
which,  in  common  with  all  other  men,  he  owes  to  his  fel- 
lows. 

The  standard  of  morality  is  absolute  and  objective,  then, 
for  each  individual,  and  approximately  the  same  for  all 
human  beings.  He  is  wise  who  seeks  not  to  mould  his  life 
according  to  his  longings,  but  who  accepts  the  rules  of  the 
game  and  follows  the  paths  blazed  by  the  seers  and  doers 
before  him.  Only  those  individuals  and  those  nations  have 
achieved  success  that  have  been  willing  to  learn  and  follow 
the  ideals  which  life  itself  imposes,  the  eternal  laws  which 
religious  men  call  the  will  of  God. 

For  criticisms  of  the  account  of  morality  here  defended:  F. 
Paulsen,  System  of  EthicSy  bk.  ii,  chap.  ii.  J.  Martineau,  Tyj)es  oj 
Ethical  Theory,  bk.  n,  chaps,  i,  ii.  T.  H.  Green,  Prolegomena  to 
Ethics,  bk.  ii,  chap,  n;  bk.  in,  chaps,  i,  iv;  bk.  iv,  chaps,  m,  iv. 
Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics,  chap.  xiv.  J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Manual  o/ 
Ethics,  2d  ed.,  chap.  vi.  H.  Kashdall,  Theory  of  Good  and  Evil,  bk.  j. 


OBJECTIONS  AND  MISUNDERSTANDINGS  147 

chap,  in;  bk.  ii,  chaps,  i,  ii.  W.  Fite,  Introductory  Study  oj 
Ethics,  pt.  I.  G.  E.  Moore,  Ethics,  chap.  vii.  W.  T.  Eixby,  The 
Crisis  in  Morals.  W.  R.  Sorley,  The  Ethics  of  Nationalism.  W.  G. 
Everett,  Moral  Values,  chap.  v. 

In  rebuttal  of  some  of  these  arguments:  J.  S.  Mill,  Utilitarian- 
ism, chaps,  n  and  iv.    H.  Spencer,  Data  of  Ethics^  chaps,  ix,  x 
Leslie  Stephen,  Science  of  Ethics,  chap.  x. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

ALTERNATIVE  THEORIES 

After  this  summary  answer  to  the  commoner  objections 
to  our  account  of  morality,  we  should  notice  a  few  of  the 
more  persistently  recurrent  formulas  that  seem  inconsistent 
with  this  explanation  of  its  fundamental  nature. 

Is  morality  "  categorical,"  beyond  need  of  justification? 

To  Kant  and  his  followers,  as  well  as  to  many  less  philo- 
sophical minds,  the  justification  of  morality  by  its  utility 
has  seemed  unworthy.  Morality  is  much  more  ultimate  and 
imperious.  The  pursuit  of  happiness  is  not  binding;  morality 
is.  The  way  to  attain  happiness  is  dubious  and  variable;  the 
commandments  of  morality  are  clear-cut  and  certain.  Dif- 
ferent people  find  happiness  in  different  activities;  the  laws 
of  morality  are  universal  and  changeless.  Morality,  there- 
fore, is  prior  to  the  pursuit  of  happiness;  its  dictates  are 
known  by  an  independent  faculty.  There  is  in  us  all  an  un- 
analyzable  and  unavoidable  "ought";  ours  not  to  reason 
why;  ours  but  to  do — and  die,  if  need  be.  Morality  is  not  a 
means  to  employ  if  we  wish  happiness;  in  that  case  its  pre- 
cepts would  be  but  hypothetical  —  ij  you  wish  happiness, 
do  so  and  so.  No,  its  commands  are  categorical.  The  unes- 
capable  fact  of  "oughtness"  is  the  bottom  fact  upon  which 
our  ethics  must  be  built. 

To  the  truth  in  this  manner  of  speech  we  must  all  respond. 
As  we  have  seen,  morality  is  not  purely  subjective  and  rela- 
tive; it  carries  the  authority  not  of  opinion  but  of  fact.  The 
right,  the  best  way,  is  unconditionally  best,  whether  we  are 


ALTERNATIVE  THEORIES  li9 

wise  enough  to  desire  it  or  no.  The  greatest  good  is  the  great- 
est good,  however  narrow  or  short-sighted  our  impulses. 
Kant  expresses  eloquently  the  absolute  and  unescapable 
nature  of  duty  in  its  perennial  opposition  to  our  transitory 
and  flickering  desires. 

(1)  But  Kant  is  unfair  in  his  picturesque  contrast  between 
the  perplexities  attending  the  pursuit  of  happiness  and  the 
certainty  attachable  to  morality.  As  a  matter  of  observa- 
tion, moral  codes  have  varied  quite  as  much  as  man's  differ- 
ent ways  of  finding  happiness.  Cases  of  moral  perplexity 
are  as  common  as  cases  of  uncertainty  with  regard  to  the 
road  to  happiness ;  there  is  no  such  universality  and  change- 
lessness  about  morality  as  he  assumes.  If  a  certain  code 
seems  fixed  and  indubitable  to  us,  it  is  in  large  degree 
because  we  have  become  accustomed  to  it  and  given  it  our 
allegiance;  a  wider  acquaintance  with  other  codes,  contem- 
porary or  past,  would  shake  our  confidence.  Some  funda- 
mental rules  are  unquestionable  —  rules  against  murder, 
rape,  etc.;  but  just  as  unquestionable  is  the  fact  that  these 
acts  make  against  human  happiness. 

(2)  Only  a  man  with  an  Hebraic  training  and  rigoristic 
temper  could  think  of  morality  in  this  awestruck  anc' 
unquestioning  way.  More  Bohemian  people  feel  no  such 
"categorical  ought'*  in  their  breasts.  And  if  a  man  feels  no 
such  ''categorical  imperative,"  how  can  you  prove  to  him 
it  is  there?  Kant's  theory  is  at  bottom  mere  assertion;  if 
because  of  your  training  and  temperament  you  respond  to 
it,  and  if  you  are  content  not  to  analyze  and  explain  the 
existence  of  this  imperious  pressure  upon  your  w^U,  you  are 
tremendously  impressed.  Otherwise  the  whole  elaborate 
Kantian  system  probably  seems  to  you  an  unreal  brain-spun 
structure. 

Kant,  though  a  man  of  extraordinary  mental  powers,  h&d 
but  a  narrow  range  of  experience  to  base  his  theories  upon. 


150  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

and  lived  too  early  to  catch  the  genetic  viewpoint.  Hence 
there  is  a  certain  pedantic  naivete  in  his  constructions.  No 
man  with  any  modern  psychological  or  historical  training 
ought  to  be  content  to  leave  this  extraordinary  "categorical 
imperative**  unexplained.  It  is  quite  possible  to  trace  its 
origin  and  understand  its  function;  there  is  nothing  unique 
or  mysterious  about  it.  Why  should  we  bow  down  to  a 
command  shot  at  us  out  of  the  air,  a  command  irrelevant 
to  our  actual  interests.'^  Children  have  to  do  so,  and  the 
majority  of  the  human  race  are  still  children,  who  may 
properly  acquiesce  in  the  rules  of  morality  without  clearly 
realizing  why.  But  the  reflective  man  should  not  be  content 
to  yield  himself  to  the  yoke  unless  he  can  see  its  necessity 
and  value.  The  "ought,"  the  knowledge  of  what  is  right, 
antedates  the  individual's  experience  of  what  is  best,  and  so 
seems  mysterious  and  a  priori  to  him;  but  it  does  not  ante- 
date the  racial  experience;  it  is  rather  its  fruit.  The  teleology 
of  conscience  is  very  simple,  and  its  genesis  and  development 
purely  natural. 

(3)  The  "ought "  seems  more  objective  than  "  conscience,** 
more  impersonal.  Just  so  does  "beauty**  seem  more  imper- 
sonal and  objective  than  our  pleasure  in  contemplating 
nature  and  art.  It  is  a  constant  tendency  of  the  mind  to 
project  its  values  out  of  itself;  to  create  "universes  of  dis- 
course **  that  seem  more  stable  and  real  than  its  own  fleeting 
states.  All  that  exists  psychologically  is  a  sense  of  pleasure 
at  looking  at  certain  combinations  of  outer  objects;  but  that 
pleasure  is  constantly  evoked  by  that  peculiar  combination, 
both  in  our  own  mind  and  in  others*.  So  we  objectify  that 
pleasure  and  call  it  the  "beauty**  of  the  object.  Similarly, 
all  that  exists  psychologically  is  a  certain  felt  pressure,  cer- 
tam  emotions  and  ideas  and  pushes  whose  teleology  is  not 
realized.  But  w^e  objectify  that  constantly  and  pretty 
universally  felt  pressure  and  tliink  of  an  impersonal,  objec* 


ALTERNATIVE  THEORIES  151 

tive  "ought.**  All  the  arts  are  expressible  in  "oughts";  and 
if  there  is  a  more  authoritative  and  categorical  nature  to 
moral  laws  than  there  is,  for  example,  to  the  aesthetic  laws 
that  art-study  reveals,  it  is  because  aesthetics  deals  with 
only  one  aspect  of  human  good  and  ethics  with  its  totality. 
Indeed,  every  impulse  is,  in  its  initial  push,  categorical, 
offering  no  reasons,  simply  pressing  upon  us  vnih.  its  require- 
ments. Hunger  and  thirst  and  sex-desire  do  not  say  to  us, 
"If  you  desire  to  be  happy,  eat,  drink,  and  gratify  your 
passion";  they  call  to  us  with  an  imperious  and  immediate 
demand.  The  demand  of  the  moral  law  is  more  insistent  and 
more  authoritative  simply  because  it  represents  a  far  more 
widespread  and  lasting  need. 

(4)  Kant's  "categorical  imperative"  is  purely  formal  and 
empty.  We  ought ,  we  ought  —  but  what.'*  It  leads,  if  to  any- 
thing, to  a  mere  emotional  reinforcement  of  our  preexisting 
moral  conceptions,  to  that  canonization  of  good  will  as  the 
one  and  only  good,  which  is  Kant's  own  position,  but  which 
we  have  found  inadequate  and  misleading.  When  we  come 
to  new  situations  it  has  no  clue  to  offer.  How  do  we  actually 
decide  in  such  cases?  By  imagining  the  consequences  of  acts 
and  seeing  their  relative  productiveness  of  happiness  and 
pain.  Or  else  by  finding  some  already  decided  case  under 
which  we  can  put  the  new  instance.  We  are  tempted  to  an 
act  that  promises  profit,  but  something  checks  us.  Ought  we 
to  do  this?  Gradually  it  comes  over  us  that  this  would  be 
steahng;  and  stealing  we  have  already  decided,  or  the  race 
has  decided  for  us,  is  wrong. 

We  have  to  decide  things  in  terms  of  our  welfare,  or  of 
those  already  stereotyped  decisions  which  represent  the 
half-conscious  strivings  of  past  generations  for  human  wel- 
fare. There  is  no  other  way ;  the  conception  of  an  imperious 
impersonal  "ought"  bearing  ruthlessly  down  upon  us  give* 
no  help  whatsoever. 


152  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

A  later  and  English  expression  of  the  feeling  that  morality 
needs  no  justification  may  be  found  in  Bradley's  Ethical 
Studies.^  **To  take  virtue  as  a  mere  means  to  an  ulterior 
end  is  in  direct  antagonism  to  the  voice  of  moral  conscious- 
ness. That  consciousness,  when  unwarped  by  selfishness  and 
not  blinded  by  sophistry,  is  convinced  that  to  ask  for  the 
Why  is  simple  immorality;  to  do  good  for  its  own  sake  is 
virtue,  to  do  it  for  some  ulterior  end  or  object  ...  is  never 
virtue.  .  .  .  Virtue  not  only  does  seem  to  be,  but  is,  an 
end  in  itself.  .  .  .  Against  the  base  mechanical  ^avavcria, 
which  meets  us  on  all  sides,  with  its  *What  is  the  use'  of 
goodness,  or  beauty,  or  truth,  there  is  but  one  fitting  answer 
from  the  friends  of  science,  or  art,  or  religion  and  virtue, 
*We  do  not  know  and  we  do  not  care.*" 

(1)  But  morality  would  then  be  a  mere  arbitrary  tyranny; 
if  it  were  of  no  use,  the  sacrifices  it  demands  would  be  sheer 
cruelty.  A  moral  law  irrelevant  to  human  interests  would 
have  no  possible  authority  over  us;  it  would  not  be  a  moral, 
i.e.,  a  right,  law  for  us. 

(2)  And  what  criterion  should  we  have  to  judge  what  is 
virtuous?  "Virtue  for  virtue's  sake"  is  equivalent  to  "the 
best  way  because  it  is  the  best  way."  But  what  makes  it  the 
best  way?  And  how  shall  we  decide  what  is  the  best  way? 

(3)  We  must  be  blind  not  to  see  the  use  of  morality,  even 
if  we  feel  that  usefulness  degrades  it.  All  moralists  agree 
that  virtue  does  actually  lead  to  happiness.  But  is  that  con- 
nection a  mere  accident?  Is  it  not  likely  that  the  usefulness 
of  virtue  has  something  to  do  with  its  origin  and  existence? 

(4)  A  real  practical  value  of  the  motto  "  Virtue  for  virtue's 
sake"  lies  in  the  implied  rejection  of  virtue  for  individual 
profit  merely.  The  moralist  rightly  feels  that  such  proverbs 
as  "Honesty  is  the  best  policy,"  "Ill-gotten  gains  do  not 
prosper,"  do  not  strike  deep  enough.  Even  if  ill-gotten  gain 

1  Pages  50-57. 


ALTERNATIVE  THEORIES  15S 

should  prosper,  it  would  be  wrong.  But  it  would  be  wroug 
simply  because  of  the  damage  to  others*  welfare,  not  for  any 
transcendental  reason.  The  opponent  of  the  eudaemonistic 
account  of  morality  nearly  always  identifies  it  with  a  selfish 
pursuit,  by  each  individual,  of  his  own  personal  happiness. 
But  that  is,  of  course,  a  very  narrow  and  unjustifiable  inter- 
pretation of  it. 

(5)  Another  practical  value  of  the  motto  lies  in  the 
implied  contrast  of  virtue  with  expediency.  Questions  of 
expediency  are  questions  of  the  best  means  to  a  given  end; 
questions  of  virtue  ask  which  ends  are  to  be  sought.  Expe- 
diency asks,  "How  shall  I  do  this.''*'  Virtue  asks,  "Shall  I 
do  this  or  that.'* "  The  counsels  of  expediency  are  thus  always 
relative  to  the  value  of  the  end,  in  itself  unquestioned;  "this 
is  the  thing  to  do  if  such  and  such  an  end  is  right  to  seek.*' 
The  counsels  of  virtue  are  absolute  —  "This  is  the  best  thing 
to  do."  It  is  rightly  felt  that  in  matters  of  right  and  wrong 
there  is  no  "if  "  about  it;  you  act  not  with  relation  to  an  end 
which  may  be  chosen  or  rejected,  on  ulterior  grounds.  The 
only  end  to  which  virtue  is  the  means  is  —  the  Hving  of  the 
best  life.  Virtue  is  the  ultimate  expediency.  But  it  is  well 
contrasted  with  all  those  secondary  matters  of  debate  for 
which  we  reserve  the  name  "expyediency." 

(6)  Finally,  the  motto  is  practically  useful  in  advising  us 
not  to  rely  upon  calculation  in  the  concrete  emergency,  but 
to  fall  back  upon  an  already  adopted  code,  to  love  virtue 
as  one  does  the  flag,  and  follow  it  unquestioningly,  as  the 
soldier  does  his  general.  We  must  be  willing  to  accept 
guidance  and  leadership.  But  every  one  knows  that  the 
flag  is  but  a  symbol;  that  the  general's  word  is  authoritative 
because  it  serves  the  best  interests  of  the  country.  And  our 
impulsive  allegiance  to  virtue,  and  love  of  it,  would  be  a  mere 
silly  day-dream  and  empty  sacrifice  were  it  not  for  its  loya*. 
safeguarding  of  human  interests. 


154  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

Should  we  live  "  according  to  nature,"  and  adjust  ourselves 
to  the  evolutionary  process? 
According  to  the  Stoic  philosophy,  the  criterion  for  con- 
duct was  to  hve  "according  to  nature.'*  "What  is  meant  by 
'rationally'?"  asks  Epictetus,  and  answers,  "Conformably 
to  nature."  "Convince  me  that  you  acted  naturally,  and  I 
will  convince  you  that  everything  which  takes  place  accord- 
ing to  nature  takes  place  rightly."  ^  And  Marcus  Aurelius 
writes,  "Do  not  think  any  word  or  action  beneath  you 
which  is  in  accordance  with  nature;  and  never  be  misled 
by  the  apprehension  of  censure  or  reproach.  ...  I  will 
march  on  in  the  path  of  nature  till  my  legs  sink  under  me. 
.  .  .  Philosophy  will  put  you  upon  nothing  but  what  your 
nature  wishes  and  calls  for."^  Of  this  preaching  Bishop 
Butler  says  that  it  is  "a  manner  of  speaking,  not  loose  and 
indetermiuate,  but  clear  and  distinct,  strictly  just  and  true."  ^ 

In  modern  times  this  doctrine  has  taken  the  form  of 
exhortation  to  take  our  place  ia  the  evolutionary  process. 
It  is  thought  by  some  that  to  grasp  the  trend  of  existing 
natural  forces  is  to  know  the  direction  of  duty.  We  have 
only  to  keep  in  the  current,  to  espouse  heartily  the  "  struggle 
for  existence"  and  rejoice  in  the  "survival  of  the  fittest," 
because  it  is  nature's  way.  In  a  recent  book  by  a  Harvard 
professor  we  read,  "  Whatever  the  order  of  the  universe  is, 
that  is  the  moral  order.  .  .  .  The  laws  of  natural  selection 
are  merely  God's  regular  methods  of  expressing  his  choice 
and  approval.  The  naturally  selected  are  the  chosen  of 
God  ....  The  whole  life  of  [moral]  people  will  consist  in 
an  intelligent  effort  to  adjust  themselves  to  the  will  thus 
expressed."  ^ 

(1)  It  is  easy  enough  to  poiut  out,  however,  that  nature  is 

*  Bk.  in,  chap,  i;  bk.  i,  chap.  xi.       '  Bk.  v.        ^  Preface  to  Sermons. 

*  T.  N.  Carver,  The  Religion  Worth  Umng,  pp.  84-89. 


ALTERNATIVE  THEORIES  155 

anything  but  9.  safe  model  for  man  to  follow.  "In  sober 
truth,  nearly  all  the  things  which  men  are  hanged  or  im- 
prisoned for  doing  to  one  another,  are  nature's  everj^day 
performances.  .  .  .  Nature  impales  men,  breaks  them  as  if 
on  the  wheel,  casts  them  to  be  devoured  by  wild  beasts, 
crushes  them  with  stones  like  the  first  Christian  martyr, 
starves  them  with  hunger,  freezes  them  with  cold,  poisons 
them  by  the  quick  or  slow  venom  of  her  exhalations."^  The 
evolutionary  process  is  cruel  and  merciless;  multitudes  per- 
ish for  every  one  that  survives,  and  the  survivor  is  not  the 
most  deserving,  but  the  strongest  or  swiftest  or  cleverest, 
Wliy  should  we  imitate  such  ruthless  ways?  Nature  is  to  be 
not  followed  but  improved  upon.  Not  only  morality,  but 
most  of  man's  activity,  consists  in  making  nature  over  to 
suit  his  needs.  **If  nature  and  man  are  both  the  works  of  a 
Being  of  perfect  goodness,  that  Being  intended  nature  as 
a  scheme  to  be  amended,  not  imitated,  by  man."  ^ 

(2)  Not  only  is  there  no  reason  why  we  should  "follow 
nature,"  but  the  result  of  so  doing  would  be  anything  but 
what  we  agree  is  moral.  Hardly  a  sin  is  committed  but  was 
"natural"  to  the  sinner.  It  is  "natural"  to  lose  our  tem- 
pers; to  be  vain,  selfish,  greedy,  lustful.  Nothing  could  be 
practically  more  pernicious  than  the  idea  that  an  impulse 
is  right  because  it  is  natural;  that  is,  because  it  is  common 
to  most  men.  "Following  nature"  naturally  means  follow- 
ing our  inclinations;  nothing  is  more  disastrous.  Virtue 
necessitates  self-denial,  effort,  living  by  ideals,  which  are 
late  and  artificial  products.  It  is  actually  true,  in  its  meta- 
phorical way,  that  we  need  to  be  born  again,  to  be  turned 
about,  converted,  saved  from  ourselves.  The  "natural" 
man  is  the  "carnal"  man;  the  "spiritual"  man,  while  poten- 
tial in  us  all,  needs  to  be  fostered  and  stimulated  by  every 

1  J.  S.  Mill,  Three  Essays  on  Religion:  "Nature,"  p.  28. 
«  Ibid.,  p.  41. 


156  THE  THEOltY  OF  MORALITY 

possible  means  if  life  is  to  be  serene  and  full  and  beautiful. 
The  difference  between  the  "natural"  man  and  the  moral 
man  is  the  difference  between  the  untrained  child,  capricious, 
the  victim  of  a  thousand  whims  and  longings,  and  the  man 
of  formed  character  whom  we  respect  and  trust.  Morality 
is,  of  course,  in  a  sense,  natural  too  —  everything  that 
exists  is  natural;  but  in  the  sense  in  which  the  word  has  a 
specific  meaning,  it  is  flatly  opposed  to  that  making-over, 
that  readjustment  of  our  impulses,  which  is  the  very 
differentia  of  morality.  There  is,  indeed,  a  eulogistic  sense 
of  the  word  "natural";  to  Rousseau  the  "return  to  nature" 
meant  the  abandonment  of  needless  artificiality  and  silly 
convention.  But  except  in  this  sense,  what  is  "natural"  has 
no  particular  merit.  The  great  achievements  of  man  have 
consisted  not  in  following  natural,  primitive  instincts,  but 
in  controlling  and  disciplining  those  instincts. 

If  we  were  to  imitate  nature  in  making  the  survival  of 
the  fittest  our  aim,  we  should  return  to  the  barbaric  ruthless- 
ness  of  ancient  Sparta  or  Rome,  exposing  infants,  kilhng  the 
feeble  and  insane,  and  becoming  just  such  cold-blooded 
pursuers  of  eflSciency  as  Nietzsche  admires.  That  such 
pitiless  competition  is  moral,  or  desirable,  no  one  but  a  few 
cranks  would  on  examination  maintain.  "Let  us  under- 
stand once  for  all,"  says  Huxley,  "that  the  ethical  progress  of 
society  depends  not  on  imitating  the  cosmic  process,  still 
less  in  running  away  from  it,  but  in  combating  it."  ^ 

(3)  This  cosmic  defiance  of  Huxley's  commands  our 
approval;  if  morality  interferes  with  the  evolutionary 
process,  let  it  interfere;  the  sooner  an  immoral  process  is 
stopped  the  better.  But,  after  all,  Huxley  unnecessarily 
limits  the  meaning  of  the  phrase  "the  cosmic  process," 
applying  it  only  to  that  stage  which  antedates  the  develop- 
ment of  morality.   That  development,  however,  is  itself  a 

^  Evolution  and  Ethics,  title  essay. 


ALTERNATIVE  THEORIES  167 

part  of  the  cosmic  process;  natural  selection,  which  in  its 
earlier  stages  selects  merely  the  strong  and  swift  and  clever, 
in  its  later  stages  selects  also  the  moral  races  and  individuals. 
So  that  to  follow  out  the  evolutionary  process  is,  for  man, 
after  all,  to  follow  morahty  as  well  as  to  cultivate  speed 
and  strength  and  wit. 

There  is,  indeed,  a  danger  to  the  race  from  the  developn 
ment  of  the  tenderer  side  of  morality,  in  the  care  for  the 
feeble  and  degenerate  which  permits  them  to  hve  and  pro- 
duce offspring,  instead  of  being  ruthlessly  exterminated,  as 
in  ruder  days.  But  this  danger  can,  and  will,  be  met  by 
measures  which,  while  permitting  life  and,  so  far  as  possible, 
happiness,  to  these  unfortunates,  will  prevent  them  from 
having  children.  Except  for  this  removable  danger,  the 
development  of  sympathy  and  tenderness  by  no  means 
involves  a  lessening  of  virility,  but  is  rather  its  necessary 
complement  and  check. 

Is  self -development  or  self-realization  the  ultimate  end? 

It  is  no  justification  of  morahty  to  say  that  it  is  "in  har- 
mony with  nature."  Is  it  an  adequate  justification  to  say 
that  morahty  is  what  makes  for  self-development  or  self- 
realization?  A  number  of  classic  and  contemporary  moral- 
ists, fighting  shy  of  the  acknowledgment  of  happiness  as  the 
ultimate  end,  have  rested  content  with  such  expressions. 
Darwin  wrote,  "The  term  *  general  good'  may  be  defined 
as  the  rearing  of  the  greatest  number  of  individuals  in  full 
vigor  and  health,  with  all  their  faculties  perfect,  under  the 
conditions  to  which  they  are  subjected.'*  ^  Paulsen  writes, 
"The  value  of  virtue  consists  in  its  favorable  effects  upon 
the  development  of  life.  .  .  .  The  value  of  life  consists  in 
the  normal  performance  of  all  functions,  or  in  the  exercise 
of  capacities  and  virtues.  ...  A  perfect  human  life  is  an 
1  Descent  oj  Man,  chai>,  iv. 


168  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

end  in  itself.  .  .  .  The  standard  is  what  has  been  called  the 
normal  type,  or  the  idea,  of  human  life."  ^ 

(1)  Such  a  point  of  view  gives  opportunity  for  stimulating 
words.  But  it  gives  no  guidance.  Observation  can  teach  us, 
slowly,  what  conduct  makes  for  happiness;  but  what  con- 
duct makes  for  "seK-development"?  The  fact  is,  the  culti- 
vation of  any  impulse  will  develop  us  in  its  direction  and 
preclude  our  development  in  other  directions;  along  which 
path  shall  we  let  ourselves  develop?  Every  choice  involves 
rejection;  infinite  possibilities  diverge  before  us;  which 
among  the  myriad  impulses  that  call  upon  us  shall  we  fol- 
low.? While  still  young  and  plastic,  we  may  develop  our- 
selves into  poets  or  philosophers  or  lawyers  or  business  men. 
In  which  of  these  ways  shall  we  "realize"  ourselves? ^  It  is 
evident  that  we  need  some  deeper  ground  of  choice.  May  it 
not  even  be  better  drastically  to  choke  our  natures,  better 
to  get  a  new  nature  than  to  realize  the  old?  Surely  there 
are  perverted  natures,  which  ought  not  to  be  developed.  In 
the  name  of  happiness  we  can  decide  on  development  or 
non-development,  as  the  need  may  be.  But  the  ideal  of 
"  self -development "  gives  us  no  criterion.  It  is  too  sweep- 
ing, too  indiscriminate. 

(2)  Again,  we  may  ask  why  we  should  develop  ourselves. 
This  ideal  is  in  need  of  justification  to  the  intellect.    The 

1  System  of  Ethics,  bk.  ii,  chap.  ii. 

2  Cf.  William  James,  Psychology,  vol.  i,  p.  309:  "I  am  often  confronted 
by  the  necessity  of  standing  by  one  of  my  empirical  selves  and  relinquishing 
the  rest.  Not  that  I  would  not,  if  I  could,  be  both  handsome  and  fat  and 
well  dressed,  and  a  great  athlete,  and  make  a  million  a  year,  be  a  wit,  a 
bon-vivant,  and  a  lady-killer,  as  well  as  a  philosopher ;  a  philanthropist, 
statesman,  warrior,  and  African  explorer,  as  well  as  a  '  tone-poet '  and  saint. 
But  the  thing  is  simply  impossible.  The  millionaire's  work  would  run 
counter  to  the  saint's;  the  bon-vivant  and  the  philanthropist  would  trip  each 
other  up;  the  philosopher  and  the  lady-killer  could  not  well  keep  house  in 
the  same  tenement  of  clay.  Such  different  characters  may  conceivably  at 
the  outset  of  life  be  alike  possible  to  a  man.  But  to  make  any  one  of  them 
actval.  the  rest  must  more  or  less  be  suppressed." 


ALTERNATIVE  THEORIES  169 

word  "development*'  has  a  eulogistic  connotation  in  our 
ears;  but  to  rely  upon  that  is  to  beg  the  question.  Strictly, 
it  means  only  the  actualizing  of  potentiality,  which  may  be 
potentiaUty  for  evil  as  well  as  for  good.  Concretely,  if  de- 
veloping our  natures  led  to  pain  and  sorrow  we  should  do 
well  to  resist  such  development.  The  plausibility  of  the 
formula  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  development  of  one's  self 
along  any  line  is  normally  pleasant  and  normally  conduces 
to  ultimate  happiness.  The  idea  of  it  attracts  us,  and  it  is 
well  that  it  should;  it  is  intrinsically  and  extrinsically  good. 
But  it  is  the  fact  of  possessing  that  intrinsic  and  extrinsic 
goodness  that  makes  it  a  legitimate  ideal.  In  sum,  it  is  good 
to  develop  one's  powers  only  because  and  in  so  far  as  such 
development  makes  for  happiness  or  is  itself  an  aspect  of  hap- 
piness. For  happiness  is  the  only  sort  of  thing  that  is  in  itself 
intrinsically  and  obviously  desirable,  without  need  of  proof. 
(3)  Practically,  this  ideal  tends  to  selfishness;  it  dees  not 
point  to  the  fact  that  the  best  development  of  seK  lies  in 
service.  The  ideal  is  capable  of  this  interpretation,  but  its 
emphasis  is  in  the  wrong  direction.  It  is  essentially  a  pagan 
conception,  and  practically  inferior  to  the  Christian  ideal 
of  service.  Service  cannot  be  the  ultimate  ideal,  any  more 
than  the  Chinese  in  the  story  could  support  themselves  by 
taking  in  one  another's  washing;  and  it  needs  to  be  justified, 
like  seK-development,  by  the  happiness  it  brings.  But  for  a 
working  conception  it  is  far  better.  Self-realization  has  never 
been  the  aim  of  the  saints  and  heroes.  Imagine  a  patriot 
dying  for  his  country's  freedom,  or  a  mother  giving  years  of 
sacrificing  toil  for  her  child,  on  the  ground  of  self -develop- 
ment! The  patriot  may  feel  that  through  his  sacrifice  and 
that  of  his  comrades  his  countrymen  will  be  freer  or  more 
united  or  rid  of  some  curse  —  i.e.,  ultimately,  happier.  The 
mother  thinks  consciously  of  the  happiness  of  the  child  she 
serves.  But  except  for  the  young  man  or  woman  preparing 


160  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

for  life,  who  may  properly  be  for  the  time  self-centered,  self- 
development  makes  but  a  sorry  ideal.  We  may  admire  a 
Goethe  who  cares  primarily  for  the  development  and  per- 
fection of  his  own  powers  —  if  he  is  handsome  and  clever 
and  of  a  winning  personality.  But  the  men  we  really  love 
and  reverence  are  those  who  forget  themselves  and  prefer 
to  go,  if  necessary,  with  their  artistic  sense  undeveloped  or 
their  scientific  sense  untrained,  so  they  may  bring  help  and 
peace  to  their  fellows.^  Goethe,  with  all  his  genius,  encyclo- 
paedic knowledge,  and  universality  of  experience,  bis  wit  and 
energy  and  power  of  expression,  stands  on  a  lower  moral 
level  than  Buddha,  St.  Francis,  Christ. 

(4)  Finally,  the  theory,  if  taken  strictly,  is  immoral.  To 
set  up  self-realization  as  the  criterion  is  to  say  that  the  self- 
realizing  act  is  to  be  chosen  even  if  it  should  produce  less  than 
the  greatest  attainable  total  good.  That  such  cases  do  not  occur, 
no  one  can  prove;  in  fact,  observation  tends  to  the  belief 
that  they  do.  This  criterion  is,  then,  not  only  practically 
but  theoretically  selfish. 

Perfection  of  character  should  be  our  aim,  yes.  But  per- 
fection of  character  is  not  to  be  found  in  a  mere  indiscrimi- 
nate cultivation  of  whatever  faculties  we  may  have.  It 
means  the  superposition  of  a  severe  discipline  upon  our 
faculties,  a  purification  of  the  will,  directed  by  more  ulti' 
mate  considerations. 

Is  the  source  of  duty  the  will  of  God? 

"Obedience  to  the  will  of  God"  describes  the  highest 
morality,  as  does  the  phrase  **  perfection  of  character."  But  is 

^  Cf.  a  recent  story-writer,  Nalbro  Bartley,  in  Ainslee's  (a  mountain- 
white  is  speaking) :  "  I  reckon  the  best  way  to  get  on  in  this  worid  is  to  learn 
just  enough  to  make  you-all  always  want  to  know  more  —  but  to  be  so 
busy  usin'  what  you-all  has  learned  that  there  ain't  no  time  to  learn  the 
rest!" 


alternati\t:  theories  lei 

it,  any  more  than  that,  the  ultimate  justification  of  morality? 
Is  the  will  of  God  the  source  of  morality?  An  adequate  dis- 
cussion of  this  question  would  involve  a  philosophy  of 
religion,  but  a  few  considerations  may  be  useful,  and  it  is 
hoped,  not  misleading. 

(1)  How  can  we  know  what  is  the  will  of  God  except  by 
considering  what  makes  for  human  welfare?    Our  Bible  is 
but  one  of  a  number  of  holy  books  which  are  held  to  be  a 
revelation  of  God's  will.    Even  if  we  grant  the  superior 
authority  of  the  Hebrew-Christian  Bible,  can  we  rely  on  its 
teachings  implicitly?   How  do  we  know  that  it  is  a  revela- 
tion of  God  except  by  our  experience  of  the  beneficence  of  its 
teachings?  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  wide  disagreement, 
among  those  who  accept  the  Bible  as  authoritative,  over  its 
real  teachings.  A  text  is  available  for  every  variety  of  belief. 
Christians  usually  emphasize  those  texts  that  make  for  what 
they  hold  true,  and  slur  over  others.  "Look  not  on  the  wine 
when  it  is  red"  is  preached  in  every  Sunday  School,  while 
"Take  a  little  wine  for  thy  stomach's  sake"  is  seldom 
quoted  save  by  brewers.  The  Bible,  the  work  of  a  hundred 
hands  during  a  span  of  a  thousand  years,  represents  a  great 
variety  of  views.    It  is  certainly  an  inspired  book  if  there 
ever  was  one;  so  much  inspiration  could  not  have  come  from 
it  if  none  had  gone  into  it.    But  to  extract  a  satisfactory 
ethical  code  from  it  is  possible  only  by  a  process  of  judicious 
selection  and  ingenious  inference.  The  Mosaic  code  is  held 
by  Christians  to  be  now  abrogated;  the  recorded  teachings 
of  Christ  are  fragmentary  and  touch  only  a  few  fundamental 
matters.    How,  for  example,  shall  we  ascertain  from  the 
Bible  the  will  of  God  with  respect  to  the  trust  problem,  or 
currency  reform,  or  penal  legislation?  Times  have  changed, 
our  problems  are  no  longer  those  of  the  ancient  Jews;  a 
hundred  delicate  questions  arise  to  which  no  answers  can 
be  found  in  Scripture. 


162  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

(2)  Suppose  the  will  of  God  to  be  clearly  and  unquestion- 
ably known,  why  should  we  obey  it?  Because  He  is  stronger, 
and  can  reward  or  punish?  If  that  is  the  reason,  the  free- 
hearted man  would  defy  Him.  Might  does  not  make  right. 
If  God  were  to  command  us  to  sin,  it  would  not  be  right  to 
obey  Him.  On  the  contrary,  we  should  sympathize  with 
Mill  in  his  outburst:  "Whatever  power  such  a  being  may 
have  over  me,  there  is  one  thing  which  he  shall  not  do:  he 
shall  not  compel  me  to  worship  him.  I  will  call  no  being 
good,  who  is  not  what  I  mean  when  I  apply  that  epithet  to 
my  fellow  creatures;  and  if  such  a  being  can  sentence  me 
to  hell  for  not  so  calling  him,  to  hell  I  will  go."  ^ 

It  is  clear  that  God  is  to  be  obeyed  only  because  He  is 
good  and  his  will  right.  Not  the  existence  of  a  will,  but  its 
goodness  makes  it  authoritative.  But  how  do  we  know  that 
it  is  good  unless  we  have  some  deeper  criterion  to  judge  it 
by?  How  do  we  know  that  God  is  not  an  arbitrary  tyrant? 
The  answer  must  be  that  we  judge  the  Christian  teachings 
to  be  a  revelation  of  God  because  we  know  on  other  grounds 
what  we  mean  by  "right"  and  "good,"  and  see  that  these 
teachings  fit  that  conception.  If  the  teachings  were  coarse 
and  low,  no  prodigies  or  miracles  would  suffice  to  attest 
them  as  God-given;  it  would  be  superstition  to  obey  them. 
Experience  alone  can  be  judge;  the  experience  of  the  benefi- 
cence of  the  Christian  ideal.  The  Way  of  Life  that  Christ 
taught  verifies  itself  when  tried;  that  it  is  the  supreme  ideal 
for  man  is  proved  by  the  transfiguration  of  life  it  effects. 
Christ  and  the  Bible  deserve  our  allegiance  because  they 
are  worthy  of  it;  from  them  we  can  learn  the  secrets  of  man's 
true  welfare. 

Morality  is,  indeed,  older  than  religion.  It  develops  to  a 
certain  point,  and  in  some  cases  very  highly,  without  the 
concept  of  God.    It  has  an  obvious  human  function  and 

1  An  Examination  of  Sir  William  Hamilton's  Philosophy,  chap.  vi. 


ALTERNATIVE  THEORIES  16S 

value  and  needs  no  supernatural  prop.  Religion  is  not  the 
root  of  morality,  but  its  flower  and  consummation.  The 
finest  ideals,  the  loftiest  heights  of  morality,  merge  into 
religion;  but  even  these  spiritual  ideals  have  their  ultimate 
root  in  the  common  soil  of  human  welfare,  and  are  rational 
ideals  because  they  minister  to  human  need. 

For  the  "categorical"  theory  of  morality,  see  Kant's  Tlieory 
of  Ethics,  tr.  Abbott;  F.  H.  Bradley,  Ethical  Studies;  F.  Paulsen,  SyS' 
tern  of  Ethics,  bk.  n,  chap,  v,  sees.  3  and  4;  Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics, 
chap.  XVI,  sec.  2;  H.  Spencer,  Data  of  Ethics,  chap,  rn,  sees.  12,  13. 
W.  Fite,  Introductory  Study  of  Ethics,  chap.  x.  H.  Rashdall, 
Theory  of  Good  and  Evil,  bk.  i,  chap.  v. 

For  the  "according  to  nature"  theory,  see  Epictetus  and 
Marcus  Aurelius,  passim;  Rousseau,  Discourse  on  Science  and  Art, 
etc. ;  J.  S.  Mill,  "Nature,"  in  Three  Essays  on  Religion;  T.  H.  Huxley, 
Evolution  and  Ethics.   T.  N.  Carver,  The  Religion  Worth  Having, 

For  the  "self-realization"  theory,  see  T.  H.  Green,  Prolegomena 
to  Ethics;  F.  Paulsen,  op.  cit.,  esp.  bk.  n,  chap,  ii,  sees.  5-8;  H.  W. 
Wright,  Self- Realization;  J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Manual  of  Ethics,  2d  ed., 
chaps.  VI  and  vii.  W.  Fite,  op.  cit.,  chap.  xi. 

For  theological  ethics,  see  any  of  the  older  theological  books. 
A  brief  comment  may  be  found  in  H.  Spencer's  Data  of  Ethics^ 
chap,  rv,  sec.  18.  Bruce,  Ethics  of  the  Old  Testament,  chap.  i.  H. 
Hoffding,  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  328  j^. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

TEE  WORTH  OF  MORALITY 

Before  proceeding  to  a  more  concrete  unfolding  of  the 
difficulties  and  problems  of  morality,  it  will  be  well  to  formu- 
late our  theory  in  terms  of  modern  biology,  and  then,  finally, 
to  answer  those  modern  critics  who  reject  not  merely  the 
rational  explanation  of  morality  but  morality  itself. 

Morality  as  the  organization  of  human  interests. 

The  worth  of  morality  is  most  commonly  defended  to-day, 
in  biological  terms,  by  describing  it  as  a  synthesis  of  human 
interests;  it  is  valuable  because  it  is  what  we  really  want  and 
need.  It  does,  indeed,  forbid  the  carrying-out  of  any  impulse 
which  renders  impossible  greater  goods;  it  flatly  opposes 
that  unrestrained  satisfying  of  a  part  of  our  natures  which 
we  call  self-indulgence,  or  of  one  nature  at  the  expense  of 
others  which  we  call  selfishness.  But  it  stifles  desire  only 
for  a  greater  ultimate  good;  it  rejects  that  needless  repression 
of  a  part  of  the  self  which  we  call  asceticism,  and  an  undue 
subordination  of  self  to  others.  It  is,  then,  the  organizing  or 
harmonizing  principle,  subordinating  the  interests  of  each 
aspect  of  the  self,  and  of  the  many  conflicting  selves,  to  the 
total  welfare  of  the  individual  and  of  the  community.  As 
Plato  pointed  out,^  morality  is  not  a  new  interest,  but  the 

*  Republic,  bks.  i-iv;  e.g.  (444) :  "Is  not  the  creation  of  righteousness  the 
creation  of  a  natural  order  and  government  of  one  another  in  the  parts  of 
the  soul,  and  the  creation  of  unrighteousness  the  opposite?"  and  (352):  "Is 
not  unrighteousness  equally  suicidal  when  existing  in  an  individual  [as  it  is 
when  it  exists  in  the  State],  rendering  him  incapable  of  action  because  he 


THE  WORTH  OF  MORALITY  185 

representative  of  all  other  interests,  the  consensus  of 
interest.  Such  a  definition,  we  must  admit,  happily  describes 
morality,  showing  us  that  if  we  would  find  its  leading  we 
must  know  ourselves;  we  must  examine  our  actual  existing 
needs  and  consider  how  best  to  attain  them.  The  direction 
of  morahty  is  that  of  a  carefully  pruned  and  weeded  human 
nature.  But  there  are  certain  dangers  inherent  in  this  form 
of  definition  which  we  must  note :  — 

(1)  We  must  not  be  satisfied  with  the  synthesis  of  con- 
sciously felt  desires.  Many  of  our  deepest  needs  fail  to 
come  to  the  surface  and  embody  themselves  in  impulses; 
we  do  not  know  or  seek  what  is  really  best  for  ourselves. 
There  are  possibilities  of  harmony  and  peace  upon  low  levels. 
We  must  be  pricked  into  desire  for  new  forms  of  life  and  not 
allowed  to  stagnate  in  a  condition  which,  however  well 
organized  and  contented,  is  lacking  in  the  richness  and  joy 
we  might  attain.  We  must  include  in  the  "interests"  to  be 
organized  all  our  dumb  and  unreaHzed  needs,  all  potential 
and  latent  impulses,  as  well  as  our  articulate  desires. 

(2)  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  perverse  and  pathological 
impulses  which  are  deserving  of  no  regard  and  must  be 
simply  cast  aside  in  the  organizing  process,  because  they 
lead  only  to  unhappiness.  There  is  a  difference  between  the 
desirable  and  the  desired;  morahty  is  not  merely  an  organ- 
izing but  a  corrective  force,  bringing  sometimes  not  peace 
but  a  sword.  A  truer  figure  would  be  to  represent  it  as  a 

is  not  at  unity  with  himself,  making  him  an  enemy  to  himself?"  and  (443): 
"The  righteous  man  does  not  permit  the  several  elements  within  him  to 
meddle  with  one  another,  or  any  of  them  to  do  the  work  of  others;  but  he 
sets  in  order  his  own  inner  life,  and  is  his  own  master,  and  at  peace  with 
himself;  and  when  .  .  .  he  is  no  longer  many,  but  has  become  one  entirely 
temperate  and  perfectly  adjusted  nature,  then  he  will  .  .  .  think  and  call 
right  and  good  action  that  which  preserves  and  cooperates  with  this  condi- 
tion." (In  quoting  Plato  I  have  used  Jowett's  translation,  with  an  occa- 
sional substitution;  as,  above,  in  the  uae  of  "righteousness"  and  "right** 
instead  of  "justice"  and  "just.") 


166  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

gardener,  tenderly  nurturing  some  flowers  and  ruthlesslj' 
pruning  or  weeding  out  others,  that  the  garden  may  be  the 
most  beautiful  place. 

(3)  Moreover,  this  definition,  while  an  excellent  descrip- 
tion of  what  morality  in  general  is,  is  not  a  justification  of 
morality,  does  not  point  to  its  ultimate  raison  d'etre.  To  all 
this  organizing  activity  we  might  say,  Cui  bono,  for  what 
good?  Why  should  we  organize  our  interests;  why  not  deny 
them  like  the  ascetics?  The  mere  existence  of  pushes,  in  this 
direction  and  that,  aiffords  no  material  for  moral  judgment; 
a  harmonizing  of  them  would  make  a  mathematical  result- 
ant, but  it  would  be  of  no  superior  worth.  If  there  were  no 
pleasure  and  pain  in  life,  it  would  not  matter  in  the  least 
whether  the  various  life-forces  were  organized  or  not.  In 
such  a  colorless  world  a  unison  of  human  impulses  would 
be  as  morally  indifferent  as  the  convergence  of  tributary 
rivers  or  the  formation  of  an  organized  solar  system.  It  is 
only,  as  we  long  ago  pointed  out,^  when  consciousness 
differentiates  into  its  plus  and  minus  values,  pleasure  and 
pain,  that  a  reason  arises  why  any  forces  in  the  cosmos 
should  be  thwarted  or  allowed  free  play.  With  the  emer- 
gence of  those  values,  however,  everything  that  affects  them 
becomes  significant.  If  the  complete  transformation  of  our 
interests  would  make  human  life  brighter,  fuller  of  plus 
values,  such  a  radical  alteration,  rather  than  a  harmoniza- 
tion, would  be  our  ideal.  As  it  is,  desire  points  normally 
toward  the  really  desirable;  the  direction  of  human  welfare 
lies,  in  general,  along  the  line  of  our  organic  needs,  of  the 
avoidance  of  clashes,  of  the  mutual  subordination  and 
cooperation  of  natural  impulses.  The  principle  of  reason, 
of  intelligence,  is  necessary  in  morality  to  find  this  way  of 
cooperation,  this  ultimate  drift  of  need;  but  without  the 
potentiality    of   happiness   chaos    would   be   as   good   as 

1  Cf.  ante,  p.  74/. 


THE  WORTH  OF  MORALITY  167 

order,  both  within  the  individual  soul  and  within  the  social 
group.  ^ 

Do  moral  acts  always  bring  happiness  somewhere? 

The  ultimate  justification  of  moraHty,  the  value  of  synthe= 
sizing  our  interests,  lies  in  the  happiness  men  thereby 
attain.  But  there  is  one  fundamental  doubt  that  ever  and 
anon  recurs  —  the  doubt  whether,  after  all,  actions  that  we 
agree  in  calling  virtuous  always  bring  happiness.  If  not, 
either  our  definition  of  moraUty,  or  our  universal  judgment 
as  to  what  is  moral,  would  seem  to  be  in  error.  Perhaps 
morality  is,  after  all,  off  the  track,  and  to  be  discarded. 

(1)  We  must  first  lay  aside  cases  of  perverted  conscience, 
acts  which  are  *' subjectively  moral,"  or  conscientious,  but 
not  objectively  best.  These  cases  we  have  aheady  glanced 
at;  they  need  be  no  stumbling-block. 

(2)  We  must  remember  that  the  types  of  conduct  which 
we  have  glorified  by  the  concepts  "virtue,"  "duty,"  etc., 
are  those  which  tend  to  produce  happiness.  We  have  to 
frame  our  judgments  and  pigeonhole  acts  according  to  their 
normal  results.  But  it  happens  not  infrequently  that  acci- 
dents upset  these  natural  tendencies.  For  these  unforesee- 
able eventualities  the  actor  is  not  responsible;  if  his  act  was 
the  best  that  could  have  been  planned,  in  consideration  of 
all  known  factors,  it  remains  the  ideal  for  future  cases,  it 
still  retains  the  halo  of  "virtue"  which  must  attract  others 
to  it.  Good  acts  may  lead,  by  unexpected  chance,  to  evil 
consequences;  bad  acts  may  result,  by  some  accident,  in 
good.  But  to  the  interfering  factor  belongs  the  credit  or 
blame;  the  act  that  would  normally  have  led  to  good  or  to 

^  Plato  realized  this,  and  in  the  Philebus  points  out  that  we  cannot  com- 
pletely describe  morality  either  in  terms  of  pleasure-pain  or  in  terms  of 
reason  (or  wisdom),  the  organizing  principle.  Both  aspects  of  morality  are 
important.  Cf.,  along  this  line,  H.  G.  Lord,  Tfie  Abuse  of  Abstraction  in 
Ethics,  in  the  James  memorial  volume. 


168  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

evil  remains  right  or  wrong.  To  rescue  a  drowning  man  is 
right,  for  such  action  normally  tends  to  human  welfare;  if 
the  rescued  man  turns  out  a  great  criminal,  or  escapes  this 
death  to  suffer  a  worse,  the  act  of  rescuing  the  drowning 
remains  a  desirable  and  therefore  moral  act.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  one  man  slanders  another,  with  the  result  that  the 
latter,  refuting  the  slander,  thereby  attains  prominence  and 
position,  the  act  of  slander,  normally  harmful,  remains  an 
immoral  act. 

It  is  a  failure  to  recognize  this  necessarily  general  charac- 
ter of  our  moral  judgments  that  raises  the  problem  of  Job. 
The  ancient  Israelites  saw  clearly  that  righteousness  was 
the  road  to  happiness;^  and  when  a  righteous  man  like  Job 
fell  into  misfortune,  they  accused  him  of  secret  sin.  Job  is 
conscious  of  his  innocence,  of  having  done  his  part  aright, 
and  cannot  understand  how  he  has  come  to  such  an  evil 
pass.  It  would  have  brought  him  no  material  alleviation, 
but  it  might  have  saved  him  some  mental  chafing,  to  recog- 
nize that  morality  is  simply  doing  our  part.  When  we  have 
done  our  best  we  are  still  at  the  mercy  of  fortune.  Happi- 
ness, as  Aristotle  pointed  out,  is  the  result  of  two  cooperat- 
ing  factors,  morality  and  good  fortune. ^  If  either  is  lacking, 
evil  will  ensue.  If  all  men  were  perfectly  virtuous,  we  should 
still  be  at  the  mercy  of  flood  and  lightning,  poisonous  snakes, 
icebergs  and  fog  at  sea,  a  thousand  forms  of  accident  and 
disease,  old  age  and  death.  The  millennium  will  not  bring 
pure  happiness  to  man;  he  is  too  feeble  a  creature  in  the 
presence  of  forces  wath  which  he  cannot  cope.   Morahty  is 

*  Cf.  for  example,  "Righteousness  tendeth  to  life;  he  that  pursueth  evil 
pursueth  it  to  his  own  death."  "  Blessed  is  every  one  that  feareth  the  Lord, 
that  walketh  in  his  ways.  Happy  shalt  thou  be,  and  it  shall  be  well  with 
thee." 

2  Nichomachean  Ethics,  bk.  i,  several  places:  e.g.,  in  chap,  vii,  "To  con- 
stitute happiness  there  must  be,  as  we  have  said,  complete  virtue  and  fit 
external  conditions." 


THE  WORTH  OF  MORALITY  169 

just  —  the  best  man  can  do;  and  it  is  not  to  be  blamed  for 
the  twists  of  fate  that  make  futile  its  efforts. 

(3)  Are  there  not,  however,  cases  where  conduct  whicl 
we  agree  is  right  is  not  even  likely  to  bring  the  greatest 
happiness  attainable;  where  not  only  immediate  but  lasting 
happiness  is  to  be  deliberately  sacrificed  in  the  name  of 
morality?  Suppose,  for  example,  a  politician  who  becomes 
convinced  of  the  evils  of  the  liquor  trade  ruins  his  career  in 
a  hopeless  fight  against  the  saloons.  He  loses  his  oflfice,  his 
income,  his  honor  in  the  sight  of  his  associates;  he  brings 
suffering  upon  his  innocent  wife  and  children;  and  all  for 
no  good,  since  his  fight  is  futile  and  ineffective.  Surely  any 
one  could  foresee  that  such  action  would  make  only  for 
unhappiness,  or  for  no  happiness  commensurable  with  the 
sacrifice.  Yet  if  we  agree  with  his  premise,  that  the  liquor 
trade  is  a  curse  to  humanity,  we  deem  his  conduct  not  only 
conscientious  but  objectively  noble  and  right.  How  can  we 
justify  that  judgment? 

In  the  first  place,  we  cannot  be  sure,  beforehand,  that 
such  a  fight  will  not  be  successful.  Forlorn  hopes  sometimes 
win.  We  must  encourage  men  to  venture,  to  take  chances; 
only  so  can  the  great  evils  that  ride  mankind  be  banished. 
If  there  is  a  fighting  chance  of  accomplishing  a  great  good 
it  is  contemptible  not  to  try;  society  must  maintain  a  code 
that  leads  at  times  to  quixotic  acts. 

In  the  second  place,  the  fight,  even  if  in  itself  hopeless,  is 
sure  to  have  valuable  indirect  results.  It  arouses  others  to 
the  need;  it  stimulates  in  others  the  willingness  to  sacrifice 
self-interest  and  work  for  the  general  good.  Every  such 
honorable  defeat  has  its  share  in  the  final  victory.  The 
subtle  benefits  that  result  from  such  moral  gallantry  are  not 
evident  on  the  surface,  but  they  are  there.  No  push  for  the 
right  is  wholly  wasted.  It  pays  mankind  to  let  its  heroes 
lavish  their  lives  in  apparently  ineffective  struggles;  through 


170  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

their  example  the  apathetic  masses  are  stirred  and  moved  a 
little  farther  toward  their  goal. 

In  general,  we  may  say  that  the  belief  that  virtue  is  not 
the  right  road  to  happiness  betrays  inexperience  and  imma- 
turity of  judgment.  A  moderate  degree  of  morality  saves 
man  from  many  pitfalls  into  which  his  unrestrained  impulses 
would  lead  him.  The  highest  levels  of  morality  bring  a 
degree  of  happiness  unknown  to  the  "natural  man."  Who 
are  the  happiest  people  in  the  world .^^  The  saints;  those  who 
are  inwardly  at  peace,  who  play  their  part  with  absolute 
loyalty.  Even  the  irremediable  misfortunes  of  life  do  not 
affect  them  as  they  do  the  worldly  man;  they  have  *' learned 
the  luxury  of  doing  good."  Of  morality  a  recent  writer  says, 
"Its  distribution  of  felicity  is  ideally  just.  To  him  who  is 
most  unselfish,  who  sinks  most  thoroughly  his  own  interests 
in  those  of  the  race  of  which  he  is  a  unit,  it  awards  the  most 
complete  beatitude."  ^  To  him  who  complains  that  he  is 
moral  but  not  happy,  the  answer  is.  Be  more  moral !  A  high 
enough  morality,  a  complete  enough  consecration,  will  lead, 
in  all  but  very  abnormal  cases,  to  happiness  in  the  individual 
life,  as  well  as  make  its  due  contribution  to  the  happiness 
of  others. 

Is  there  anything  better  than  morality? 

It  is  this  lack  of  vision,  this  immature  skepticism  as  to 
the  service  of  morality  to  human  welfare,  that  has  fired  a 
flame  of  revolt  in  certain  minds,  a  revolt  not  merely  against 
incidental  defects  and  outworn  conceptions  of  morality, 
but  against  morality  ilberhaupt.  The  declamations  of  these 
Promethean  rebels  make  it  clear,  however,  that  their  protest 
is  but  the  old  fault  of  condemning  a  necessary  institution 
altogether  for  its  imperfections  or  its  abuses.  Morality  has 
been  blended  with  superstition  and  tyranny,  has  been  often 
^  J.  H.  Levy,  of  London,  in  a  funeral  oration. 


THE  WORTH  OF  MORALITY  171 

blind,  perverted,  narrow,  checking  noble  impulses  and  chok- 
ing the  rich  and  happy  development  of  life.  But  it  is  one 
thing  to  arraign  these  accidents  and  corruptions  of  morality; 
it  is  quite  another  to  discard  the  whole  system  of  guidance 
of  which  they  are  but  the  excrescences  and  mistakes.  This 
usurping  is,  of  course,  also  in  large  part  a  thirst  for  novelty, 
a  love  of  paradox,  of  practising  ingenuity  in  making  the 
better  appear  the  worse;  it  is  in  part  a  volcanic  eruption  of 
suppressed  longings  and  a  protest  against  the  inadequacy  of 
our  present  code  to  provide  opportunity  and  happiness  for 
the  masses.  The  motives  vary  with  the  individual  rebels. 

It  must  suffice,  however,  from  among  the  many  leaders  of 
this  revolt,  to  quote  that  clever  but  unbalanced  German 
iconoclast,  Nietzsche.  Typical  of  his  doctrine  is  the  follow- 
ing:^ "Never  until  now  was  there  the  least  doubt  or  hesita- 
tion to  set  down  the  *  good '  man  as  of  higher  value  than  the 
*evil*  man  —  of  higher  value  in  the  sense  of  furtherance, 
utility,  prosperity,  as  regards  man  in  general  (the  future  of 
man  included).  What  if  the  reverse  were  true?  What  if  in 
the  *good'  one  also  a  symptom  of  decline  were  contained, 
and  a  danger,  a  seduction,  a  poison,  a  narcotic  by  which  the 
present  might  live  at  the  expense  of  the  future  ?  Perhaps  more 
comfortably,  less  dangerously,  but  also  in  humbler  style  — 
more  meanly?  So  that  just  morality  were  to  blame,  if  a 
highest  mightiness  and  splendor  of  type  of  man  —  possible 
in  itseK  —  were  never  attained?  And  that,  therefore, 
morality  itself  would  be  the  danger  of  dangers?'* 

The  point  of  this  tirade  is  that  morality  puts  a  wet 
blanket  over  human  powers;  it  is  a  bourgeois  ideal,  saving 
men,  indeed,  from  pain,  but  also  robbing  life  of  its  pictur- 
esqueness  and  glory.  Many  people  frankly  prefer  "interest- 
ing" to  "good"  people;  Nietzsche  generalizes  this  feeling. 
Morality  is  to  him  uninteresting,  dull,  a  code  for  slaves,  for 
^  Genealogy  0/  Morals  (ed.  Alex.  Tillc),  Foreword,  p.  9. 


172  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

goody-goodies  and  molly-coddles.  Give  him  the  clash  of 
combat,  the  tang  of  cruelty  and  lust,  the  tingle  of  unre- 
strained power.  Every  man  for  himself  then,  and  the  Devil 
take  the  hindmost. 

Shocked  as  we  are  by  this  brutal  platform,  there  is  some- 
thing in  it  that  appeals  to  the  red  blood  and  adventurous 
spirit  in  us;  after  all,  we  are  not  far  removed  from  the  sav- 
age, and  the  thought  of  a  psalm-singing,  tea-drinking,  tamely 
good  world  is  abhorrent  to  the  marrow  of  us.  Stevenson, 
with  his  delightfully  irresponsible  audacity,  sighs  for  an 
occasional  "furlough  from  the  moral  law";  and  there  are 
times  for  most  of  us  when  it  seems  as  if  we  should  choke  and 
smother  under  the  everlasting  "Thou  shalt  not!"  But  the 
daring  rebel,  the  defiant  Titan,  comes  creeping  back  to  the 
shelter  of  morality  with  a  headache  or  something  worse, 
and  discovers  that  his  Promethean  boldness  was  but  childish 
petulance;  that  it  is  futile  and  foolish  to  try  to  escape  the 
inexorable  laws  of  human  life. 

There  are,  in  fact,  two  adequate  answers  that  can  be  made 
to  the  despiser  of  morality :  — 

(1)  Dull  or  not,  repressive  or  not,  morality  is  absolutely 
necessary.  It  is  better  than  the  pain,  the  insecurity,  the 
relapse  into  barbarism,  that  immorality  implies.  Our  whole 
civilization,  everything  that  makes  human  life  better  than 
that  of  the  beasts  of  prey,  would  collapse  without  its  founda- 
tion of  moral  obedience.  The  regime  of  slashing  individual- 
ism would  kill  off  many  of  the  weaker  who  are  precious  to 
humanity  —  a  Homer  (if  he  was  blind),  a  Keats,  a  Steven- 
son; nay,  if  carried  to  extreme,  it  would  put  an  end  to  the 
race.  For  who  are  the  weakest,  the  "hindmost,"  but  the 
babies!  Sympathy  and  love  and  self-sacrifice,  at  least  in 
parents,  are  necessary  if  the  race  is  to  endure  a  generation. 
But  even  for  the  individual,  the  penalties  of  immorality  are 
too  obvious  to  need  recapitulation.  If  morality  is  repression. 


THE  WORTH  OF  MORALITY  173 

it  is  the  minimal  repression  consistent  with  the  maintenance 
of  successful  and  happy  life.  Its  real  aim  is  to  bring  life,  and 
life  more  abundantly. 

(2)  But  if  we  are  looking  for  something  great,  for  adven- 
ture and  excitement  and  battle  against  odds,  we  can  find  it 
much  better  than  in  brutally  slashing  at  our  fellows,  or 
running  amuck  at  the  beck  of  our  impulses,  by  putting  our 
valor  at  the  service  of  some  really  great  human  endeavor. 
If  we  want  to  get  into  the  big  game,  the  great  adventure,  we 
must  pit  ourselves,  with  the  leaders  of  mankind,  against  the 
hostile  universe.  The  men  and  women  who  set  our  blood 
tingling  and  our  hearts  beating  fastest  are  —  Darwin,  dis- 
coverer by  patient  labor  of  a  great  cosmic  law;  Pasteur, 
conqueror  at  last  over  a  terrible  human  disease;  Peary,  first 
to  plant  foot  upon  the  axis  of  the  world;  Goethals,  builder 
of  a  canal  that  links  the  oceans.  The  steady  march  of  a  mor- 
alized civilization,  presenting  united  front  to  the  cosmos,  is 
infinitely  more  glorious  than  the  futile,  aimless,  and  petty 
struggles  of  an  anarchic  immorality.  Our  half -disciplined 
life  is  already  far  richer  and  more  romantic  than  the  life  of 
Nietzsche's  "supermen"  could  be;  and  we  are  only  a  little 
way  along  the  road  of  moral  progress.  The  real  superman 
will  be  a  better  man,  a  man  of  tenderness  and  chivalry,  of 
loyalty  and  self-control,  a  man  of  disciplined  heart  and 
purified  will;  to  attain  to  such  a  supermanliness  is,  indeed,  a 
heroic  and  splendid  achievement,  worthy  of  our  utmost 
endeavor,  and  calling  into  play  all  our  noblest  powers. 

Some  there  are,  accustomed  to  the  vision  of  tables  of  stone 
engraved  by  the  hand  of  God  and  set  up  for  man's  obedience 
amid  Sinaitic  thunders,  for  whom  the  discovery  of  the  hum- 
ble human  and  prehuman  origin,  and  the  stumbHng  hit-or- 
miss  evolution,  of  morality  dulls  its  sanctity.  But  any  one 
who  is  tempted  for  this  reason  to  deride  morality  may  con- 
sole himself  with  the  reflection  that  everything  else  of 


174  THE  THEORY  OF  MORALITY 

supreme  importance  in  human  life  is  of  plebeian  ancestry. 
Reason,  art,  government,  religion,  had  their  crude  and 
superstition-ridden  beginnings.  Man  himself  was  once 
hardly  different  from  a  monkey.  Yet  there  is  a  spark  of  the 
divine  in  him  and  in  all  these  arts  and  institutions  which  he 
with  the  aid  of  the  cosmic  forces  has  evolved.  Surely  a 
juster  judgment  may  find  a  sublimity  in  this  age-long  march 
from  the  clod  toward  the  millennium  that  could  never 
belong  to  the  spectacular  but  very  provincial  myths  of  the 
Semites.  The  emotions  ever  lag  behind  the  intellect;  and 
our  hearts  may  still  yearn  for  the  neighborly  and  passionate 
battle-god  of  the  Pentateuch.  Moreover,  we  shall  continue 
to  recognize  a  vast  fund  of  truth  and  insight  in  those  early 
folk- tales  and  primitive  codes.  But  there  comes  a  deeper 
breath  to  the  man  who  realizes  that  morality  and  religion 
long  antedate  the  Jewish  revelation,  and  comes  to  see  God 
in  the  tens  and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years  of  slow  but 
splendid  human  progress.  Historical  codes  of  morals  are, 
indeed,  seamed  with  superstition  and  are  progressively  dis« 
placed;  but  morality  persists.  At  no  time  has  man  wholly 
solved  the  problem  of  hfe,  but  he  must  ever  live  by  the  best 
solution  he  has  found.  The  innumerable  codes  are  so  many 
experiments,  their  very  differences  bearing  witness  to  the 
need  of  some  set  of  guiding  principles  for  conduct. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  morality,  being  a  merely  human 
invention,  may  be  discarded  when  we  choose.  To  this  we 
may  reply  that  moraUty  bears,  indeed,  the  indisputable 
marks  of  human  instinct,  will,  and  reason;  but  it  is  not  an 
invention;  it  is  a  lesson,  slowly  learned.  In  its  humanness 
lies  its  value.  It  is  not  an  alien  code,  irrelevant  to  human 
nature;  it  is  a  natural  function;  it  is  the  greatest  of  human 
institutions  —  unless  that  be  religion,  which  is  its  flower  and 
consummation.  Morahty  is  made  for  man,  for  his  use  and 
guidance;  what  could  possibly  have  greater  sanctity  or 


THE  WORTH  OF  MORALITY  176 

authority  for  him?  Rebel  as  he  may,  and  chafe  under  its 
restraints,  he  always  comes  back  to  morality;  perhaps  to  a 
revised  code,  but  to  essentially  the  same  control;  for  he 
cannot  do  without  it.  Our  morality  has  its  defects,  but  it  is 
on  the  right  track.  A  clearer  insight  into  its  teleological 
necessity,  the  purpose  it  exists  to  serve,  will  direct  us  in  our 
efforts  to  revise  it,  so  to  fashion  it  as  to  make  it  productive 
of  still  greater  good  in  the  time  to  come.  But  if  we  discard 
it  altogether,  we  are  "like  the  base  Indian"  who 

"  threw  a  pearl  away. 
Richer  than  all  his  tribe," 

What  we  need  is  not  to  abandon  but  to  steadily  improve  our 
code;  and  whereas  any  one  can  pick  flaws,  only  the  man  of 
trained  mind  and  controlled  desire  can  discover  feasible 
lines  of  advance.  "When  all  is  said,  there  is  nothing  as  yet 
to  be  changed  in  our  old  Aryan  ideal  of  justice,  conscientious- 
ness, courage,  kindness,  and  honor.  We  have  only  to  draw 
nearer  to  it,  to  clasp  it  more  closely,  to  realize  it  more 
effectively;  and,  before  going  beyond  it,  we  have  still  a  long 
and  noble  road  to  travel  beneath  the  stars.'*  ^ 

The  conception  of  morality  as  the  organization  of  interests  vnW 
be  found  in  Plato's  Republic  and  Aristotle's  Ethics,  and  in  many 
recent  ethical  books  and  papers.  Among  them  are  R.  B.  Perry's 
Moral  Economy,  G.  Santayana's  Reason  in  Science  (chap,  ix); 
William  James,  "The  Moral  Philosopher  and  the  Moral  Life'*  (ia 
the  Will  to  Believe  and  Other  Essays);  E.  B.  Holt,  The  Freudian 
Wish  and  its  Place  in  Ethics,  chaps,  iii,  rv. 

A  discussion  of  whether  morality  really  makes  for  happiness 
will  be  found  in  Leslie  Stcplien,  System  of  Ethics,  chap,  x;  W.  L. 
Sheldon,  An  Ethical  Movement,  chap.  vni. 

For  Nietzsche's  theory,  see  his  Beyond  Good  and  Evil.  There 
are  many  excellent  replies;  a  brief  but  adequate  one  will  be  found 
in  Perry,  op.  cit.,  chap.  i.  See  also  1*.  E.  More,  Nietzsche.  Atlantic 
Monthly,  vol.  114,  p.  518;  vol.  110,  p.  321.  Hibbert  Journal,  vol. 
13,  p.  102.  Harvard  Theological  Review,  vol.  6,  p.  461. 

*  Maeterlinck,  "Our  Anxious  Morality,"  in  The  Measure  of  the  Hours, 


PART  III 

PERSONAL  MORALITY 


CHAPTER  XV 

HEALTH  AND  EFFICIENCY 

With  the  general  nature  and  justification  of  morality  in 
our  minds,  we  may  now  seek  to  apply  our  criteria  of  con- 
duct to  the  concrete  problems  that  confront  us,  first  taking 
up  those  problems  which,  however  important  their  social 
bearings,  are  primarily  problems  of  private  life,  problems 
for  the  individual  to  settle,  and  then  turning  to  those  wider 
problems  which  the  community  as  a  whole  must  grapple 
with  and  solve  by  public  action. 

Bodily  health  is  the  foundation  of  personal  morality;  to 
act  at  all  there  must  be  physical  energy  available;  and,  other 
things  equal,  the  man  with  the  greatest  store  of  vitality  will 
live  the  happiest  and  most  useful  life.  Christianity  has  too 
often  forgotten  this  fundamental  truth,  which  needs  empha- 
sis at  the  very  outset  of  our  concrete  studies  in  morality. 

What  is  the  moral  importance  of  health? 

(1)  Health  is  in  itself  a  great  contribution  to  the  intrinsic 
worth  of  life.  To  awake  in  the  morning  with  red  blood 
stirring  in  the  veins,  to  come  to  the  table  with  hearty  appe- 
tite, to  go  about  the  day's  work  with  the  springing  step  of 
abounding  energy,  and  to  reach  the  close  of  day  with  that 
healthy  fatigue  that  quiets  restless  desire  and  betokens  the 
blessed  boon  of  sound  and  dreamless  sleep  —  this  is  to  be  a 
long  way  on  the  road  to  contentment.  Health  cannot  in 
itself  guarantee  happiness  if  otlier  evils  obtrude;  but  it 
removes  many  of  the  commonest  impediments  thereto,  and 
normally  produces  an  increase  in  all  other  values.   Height- 


180  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

ened  vitality  means  an  increased  sense  of  power,  a  keener 
zest  in  everything;  troubles  slide  off  the  healthy  man  that 
would  stick  to  the  less  vigorous.  Bodily  depression  almost 
always  involves  mental  depression;  our  "blues"  usually 
have  an  organic  basis.  It  was  not  a  superstition  that  evolved 
our  word  "melancholy"  from  the  Greek  "black  (i.e.,  dis- 
ordered) liver";  nor  is  it  a  mere  pun  or  paradox  to  say  that 
whether  life  is  worth  living  depends  upon  the  liver. 

More  than  this,  health  is  opportunity.  The  man  of  abun- 
dant energy  can  taste  more  of  the  joys  of  life,  can  enlarge 
the  bounds  of  his  experience,  can  use  precious  hours  of  our 
brief  span  which  the  weakling  must  devote  to  rest,  can  learn 
more,  can  range  farther,  can  venture  all  sorts  of  undertak- 
ings from  which  the  other  is  precluded  by  his  lack  of 
strength.  All  these  experiences,  if  they  are  guided  by  pru- 
dence and  self-control,  bring  their  meed  of  insight  and  skill 
and  character.  It  is  only  through  living  that  we  grow,  and 
health  means  the  potentiality  of  life. 

(2)  Health  means  efficiency,  more  work  done,  greater 
usefulness  to  society.  Sooner  or  later  every  man  who  is 
worth  his  salt  finds  some  task  the  doing  of  which  arouses  his 
ambition  and  becomes  his  particular  contribution  to  the 
world.  How  bitterly  will  he  then  regret  the  heritage  denied 
him  or  foolishly  squandered,  the  handicap  of  quivering 
nerves,  muscular  flabbiness,  wandering  mind,  that  impedes 
its  accomplishment!  Determination  and  persistence  may, 
indeed,  use  a  frail  physique  for  splendid  service;  such  names 
as  Darwin,  Spencer,  Prescott,  remind  us  of  the  strength  of 
human  will  that  can  override  physical  obstacles  and  by  long 
effort  produce  a  great  achievement.  But  for  one  victor  in 
this  struggle  of  will  against  body  there  are  a  hundred  van- 
quished; and  even  these  men  of  genius  and  grit  could  have 
accomplished  far  more  if  they  had  had  normally  serviceable 
bodies. 


HEALTH   AND   EFFICIENCY  181 

(3)  Health  makes  morality  easier  and  likelier.  The  per- 
nicious influence  of  bodily  frailty  and  abnormality  upon 
mind  and  morals  has  always  been  recognized  (cf .  the  mens 
Sana  in  corpore  sano  of  the  ancients),  but  was  never  so  clearly 
seen  as  to-day.  The  lack  of  proper  nutrition  or  circulation, 
the  state  of  depressed  vitality  resulting  from  want  of  fresh 
air,  exercise,  or  sleep,  are  important  factors  in  the  produc- 
tion of  insanity  and  crime.  Overfatigue  means  a  weakening 
of  the  power  of  attention,  and  hence  of  will,  a  paralyzing  of 
the  highest  brain  centers,  a  lowered  resistance  to  the  more 
primitive  instincts  and  passions.  Chronic  irritability, 
moroseness,  pathological  impulses  of  all  sorts,  generally 
betoken  eye-strain,  dyspepsia,  constipation,  or  some  other 
bodily  derangement.  With  the  regaining  of  normal  health 
the  unruly  impulses  usually  become  quieter,  sympathy 
flows  more  freely,  the  man  becomes  kinder,  more  tolerant, 
and  morally  sane.  Professor  Chittenden  of  Yale  is  quoted  as 
saying  that  "lack  of  proper  physical  condition  is  responsible 
for  more  moral  .  .  .  ills  than  any  other  factor."  Certain 
temptations,  at  least,  bear  more  hardly  upon  the  man  of 
weak  and  unstrung  nerves;  in  Rousseau's  well-known  words, 
"The  weaker  the  body,  the  more  it  commands."  And  in 
general,  abnormal  organic  conditions  involve  a  warping  of 
the  judgment,  a  twisted  or  unbalanced  view  of  life  (cf. 
Wordsworth's  "Spontaneous  reason  breathed  by  health"), 
which  leads  away  from  the  path  of  virtue.  All  honor,  then, 
to  the  men  who  have  kept  clean  and  true  and  cheerful 
through  years  of  bodily  depression;  such  conquest  over  evil 
conditions  is  one  of  the  finest  things  in  life.  But  nobility  of 
character  is  hard  enough  to  attain  without  adding  the  obsta- 
cle of  a  reluctant  body;  and  although  some  virtues  are  easier 
to  the  invalid,  and  some  temptations  removed  from  his  cir- 
cumscribed field  of  activity,  it  remains  true  in  general  that 
health  is  the  great  first-aid  to  morality. 


182  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

Can  we  attain  to  greater  health  and  efficiency? 

If  health  is,  then,  so  important  to  the  individual  and 
society,  its  pursuit  is  not  a  selfish  or  a  trivial  matter;  it  is 
rather  a  serious  and  unavoidable  duty.  The  gospel  of  health 
is  sorely  needed  in  our  modern  world.  Young  men  and 
women  use  up  their  apparently  limitless  capital  with  heed- 
less waste;  those  who  start  with  a  lesser  inheritance  neglect 
the  means  at  their  command  for  increasing  their  stock  of 
strength  and  winning  the  power  and  exuberance  of  life  that 
might  be  theirs.  There  are,  of  course,  many  cases  of  unde- 
served ill-health;  we  ill  understand  as  yet  the  causes  and 
enemies  of  bodily  vigor,  and  many  a  gallant  fight  for  health 
has  gone  unrewarded.  But  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  a 
wise  conduct  of  life  would  retain  robust  strength  for  the 
threescore  or  more  years  of  our  allotted  course,  increase  it 
for  those  who  start  poorly  equipped,  and  regain  it  for  those 
who  by  mischance,  blunder,  or  imprudence  have  lost  their 
heritage.  Yet  half  the  world  hardly  knows  what  real  health 
is.  Our  hospitals  and  sanitariums  are  crowded,  our  streets 
are  full  of  half-sick  people  —  hollow  chests,  sallow  faces, 
dark-rimmed  eyes,  nervous,  run-down,  worn-out,  brain- 
fagged,  dragging  on  their  existence,  or  dying  before  their 
time,  robbed  by  stupidity  and  ignorance  of  their  birthright 
of  full-breathed  rosy-cheeked  health,  and  robbing  the  soci- 
ety that  has  reared  them  of  the  full  quota  of  their  service. 
Health  is  not  merely  freedom  from  disease;  we  have  a  right 
to  what  Emerson  called  "plus  health."  And  among  the 
men  who  rightly  awaken  our  enthusiasm  are  those  who  out 
of  a  frail  childhood  have  built  up  for  themselves  by  persever- 
ance and  will  a  manhood  of  physical  power,  endurance,  and 
efficiency. 

The  principles  of  health  for  the  normal  man  are  few  and 
.simple,  the  reward  is  great;  what  stands  in  the  way  is  partly 


HEALTH  AND   EFFICIENCY  18S 

our  apathy  and  indifference,  partly  our  incontinent  appetites, 
partly  the  unwholesome  and  deadening  social  influences  in 
which  we  find  ourselves  enmeshed.  For  those  who  care 
enough,  almost  unlimited  vistas  open  up;  as  Spinoza  has  it, 
"No  one  has  yet  found  the  Hmits  of  what  the  body  can  do.*' 
William  James  was  convinced  ^  that  the  potentialities  of 
human  energy  and  efficiency  are  but  half  realized  by  the  best 
of  us.  We  must  learn  better  to  run  the  human  machine. 
Our  prevalent  disregard  of  the  conditions  of  bodily  vigor, 
our  persistent  carelessness  in  the  elementary  matters  of 
hygiene  and  health,  is  nothing  short  of  criminal. 

"We  would  have  health,  and  yet 
Still  use  our  bodies  ill; 
Bafflers  of  our  own  prayers  from  youth  to  life's  last  scenes." 

Happiness  that  impairs  health  seldom  pays.  Where  it  is  a 
question  of  useful  work  done  at  the  expense  of  our  fatigue, 
there  may  be  more  question;  normally  such  sacrifices  are 
undesirable;  but  what  seems  overfatigue  may  not  really  be 
so,  and  the  earnest  man  will  err  on  this  side  rather  than  run 
risk  of  pusillanimous  shirking.  Moreover,  some  work  prac- 
tically requires  an  overeffort  for  its  accomplishment;  and 
no  man  of  mettle  will  begrudge  his  very  life-blood  when 
necessary.  Overwork  is  "the  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds." 
Yet  when  not  really  necessary,  it  must  be  ranked  as  a  sin, 
and  not  too  generously  condoned.  The  intense  competition 
of  modern  industry,  the  complexity  of  our  economic  machin- 
ery, the  colossal  accumulation  of  facts  which  must  be  mas- 
tered for  success,  bring  heavy  pressure  to  bear  upon  those 
who  have  their  way  to  make  in  the  world.  The  pace  is  fast, 
and  many  there  are  that  die  or  break  from  overstrain  when 
at  the  height  of  their  usefulness.  Such  overpressure  does 
not  pay;  it  means  that  less  work  will  in  the  end  get  done. 
Wlien  we  consider  also  the  moral  dangers  it  involves,  the 
*  See  his  essay,  "The  Energies  of  Man,"  in  Memories  and  Studies. 


184  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

glumness  or  irritability  of  taut  nerves,  the  unhealthy  tension 
that  demands  strong  excitements  and  does  not  know  how  to 
rest  or  enjoy  quiet  and  restorative  pleasures;  when  we  con- 
sider the  broken  men  and  women  that  have  to  be  taken  care 
of,  the  widows  and  children  of  the  workers  who  have  died 
before  their  time,  the  children  perhaps  weakened  for  life 
because  of  the  tired  condition  of  their  parents  at  birth;  when 
we  consider  the  number  of  defective  children  born  to  such 
overworked  parents,  we  realize  that  it  is  not  primarily  a 
question  of  enjoying  life  more  or  less,  it  is  a  matter  of  grave 
economic  and  moral  import.^  Whether  we  actually  work 
harder,  on  the  whole,  than  our  forebears,  and  whether  there 
is  actually  a  decrease  in  the  health  and  endurance  of  the 
younger  generation  to-day  owing  to  the  overstrain  of  their 
parents,  is  open  to  dispute.  Certainly  when  one  compares 
a  portrait  of  Reynolds,  Gainsborough,  or  Stuart  with  one 
by  Sargent,  Thayer,  or  Alexander,  there  is  a  noticeable 
difference  of  type,  indicative  of  a  different  ideal  of  life  in  the 
upper  stratum  of  society,  an  ideal  of  effort  and  efficiency, 
which  is  far  better  than  a  patrician  dilettantism,  but  has  in 
turn  its  dangers. 

We  need  to  recal  the  line  of  ^Eschylus, 

"All  the  gods'  work  is  eflFortless  and  calm." 

Or  Matthew  Arnold's  sonnet  on  Quiet  Work:  — 

"One  lesson.  Nature,  let  me  learn  of  thee, 
A  lesson  that  on  every  wind  is  borne, 
A  lesson  of  two  duties  kept  at  one 
Though  the  loud  world  proclaim  their  enmity: 
Of  toil  unsevered  from  tranquillity. 
Of  labor  that  in  lasting  fruit  outgrows 
Far  noisier  schemes,  accomplished  in  repose. 
Too  great  for  haste,  too  high  for  rivalry.  .  .  ." 

Most  of  US  would  find  our  powers  adequate  to  our  duties  if 

we  learned  to  rest  when  we  are  not  working,  and  spend  no 

1  Cf.  M.  G.  Sehlapp,  in  the  Outlook,  vol.  100,  p.  782. 


HEALTH  AND  EFFICIENCY  185 

energy  in  worry  and  fretfulness.^  Tliis  nervous  leakage  is  a 
notoriously  American  ailment;  we  knit  our  brows,  we  work 
our  fingers,  we  fidget,  we  rock  in  our  chairs,  we  talk  explo- 
sively, we  live  in  a  quiver  of  excitement  and  hiury,  in  a 
chronic  state  of  tension.  We  need  to  follow  St.  Paul's  exhor- 
tation to  "Study  to  be  quiet";  to  learn  what  Carlyle  called 
"the  great  art  of  sitting  still.'*  We  must  not  lower  our 
American  ideal  of  efficiency,  of  the  "strenuous  life";  but  it 
is  precisely  through  that  self-control  that  is  willing  to  live 
within  necessary  limitations,  and  able  to  cut  off  the  waste 
of  fruitless  activity  of  mind  and  body,  that  our  national 
efficiency  can  be  maintained  at  its  highest. 

Is  continued  idleness  ever  justifiable? 

We  do  not  need  Stevenson's  charming  Apology  for  Idlers^ 
to  Ivuow  that  rest  and  recreation  are  as  wholesome  and  neces- 
sary as  work.  But  idleness  is  only  profitable  and  really 
enjoyable  when  it  comes  as  an  interlude  in  the  midst  of 
activity.  There  is  much  to  be  done,  and  no  one  is  free  to 
shirk  his  share  of  the  world's  work;  we  may  enjoy  our  vaca- 
tions only  as  we  have  earned  the  right  to  them.  Except  for 
invahds  and  idiots,  continued  idleness  is  never  justifiable. 
Clothes  we  must  have,  and  food,  and  shelter,  and  much 
else;  if  a  man  does  not  produce  these  things  for  himself,  or 
some  equivalent  which  he  can  fairly  exchange  for  them,  he 
is  a  parasite  upon  other  men's  labor.  "Six  days  shalt  thou 
labor"  is  the  universal  commandment,  and  "In  the  sweat  of 
thy  brow  shalt  thou  eat  bread."  An  old  Cliinese  proverb 
runs,  "If  there  is  one  idle  man,  there  is  another  who  is 
starving."  Certainly  a  state  in  which  the  masses  will  have 
their  drudgery  lightened  for  them  and  opportunity  for  a 

^  Cf.  W.  James's  essay  on  "The  Gospel  of  Relaxation,"  in  Talks  to 
Teachers  and  Students,  or  Annie  Payson  Call's  books,  of  which  the  best 
known  is  Power  Throwjh  liepose. 


186  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

well-rounded  human  life  given,  will  be  attained  only  in  a 
society  where  there  are  no  drones;  and  no  man  or  woman 
worthy  of  the  name  will  be  content  to  live  idly  on  the 
labor  of  others.  "Others  have  labored,  and  we  have  entered 
into  their  labors";  it  is  not  fair  to  accept  so  much  without 
giving  what  we  can  in  return. 

For  most  men  and  women  there  is,  of  course,  no  alterna- 
tive; they  must  work  or  live  a  wretched,  comfortless  Ufe, 
with  the  actual  risk  of  starvation.  A  few  may  prefer  the 
precarious  existence  of  the  tramp,  or  pauper;  but  they  must 
pay  the  price  in  homelessness  and  hazard.  Except  for  abnor- 
mal social  conditions,  the  vile  housing  of  the  poor,  the  hope- 
less monotony  and  overlong  hours  of  most  forms  of  unskilled 
labor,  the  lure  of  drink,  and  the  deprivation  of  the  natural 
joys  of  life,  there  would  be  few  of  these  voluntary  idlers 
among  the  poor.  The  aversion  to  work,  when  it  is  decently 
agreeable,  in  decent  surroundings,  and  not  carried  to  the 
point  of  fatigue,  is  abnormal;  and  it  is  by  the  improvement 
of  the  conditions  and  remuneration  of  labor  that  we  must 
seek  to  cure  that  unwillingness  to  work,  in  the  poor,  which 
Tolstoy  came  to  believe  was  their  greatest  curse.  ^ 

Much  more  difficult  to  cure  is  the  curse  of  idleness  among 
the  rich.  The  absence  of  the  need  of  working,  and  the  possi- 
bihties  of  pleasure-seeking  which  money  affords,  are  a  con- 
stant temptation  to  them  to  live  a  life  of  ease.  The  spectacle 
is  not  unfamiliar  of  rich  young  men  traveling  about  the 
world,  living  at  their  clubs,  spending  their  energies  in  gaye- 
ties  and  sports,  with  hardly  a  sense  of  the  resj>onsibilities 
which  their  privileges  entail.  Fortunately,  however,  there  is, 
in  America  at  least,  a  pretty  widespread  sense  of  shame 
among  men  about  such  shirking,  and  the  idler  has  to  face  a 
certain  amount  of  mild  contempt.  Upon  women  the  pres- 
sure of  public  opinion  has  not  yet  become  so  general;  and 
1  See  his  What  Shall  We  Do  Then  ?  (or  Wliat  to  Do?) 


HEALTH  AND  EFFICIENCY  187 

the  good-for-nothing  upper-class  ladies  who  spend  their 
time  at  cards,  at  teas,  at  the  theater,  who  think  of  little  but 
dress  and  gossip,  or  of  the  latest  novels  and  music,  who  evade 
their  natural  duties  of  motherhood  or  give  over  care  of  home 
and  children  to  hired  servants,  that  they  may  be  freer  to 
live  the  butterfly  life,  are  still  too  httle  rebuked  by  their 
hard-working  sisters  and  by  men.  We  must  impress  it  up>on 
all  that  the  inheritance  of  money  does  not  excuse  laziness; 
if  the  pressure  to  earn  a  living  is  removed,  there  are  number- 
less ways  in  which  the  rich  can  serve,  privileged  ways,  happy 
ways,  which  there  is  far  less  pretext  for  avoiding  than  the 
poor  have  for  hating  their  grim  toil.  In  Carlyle's  words. 
*'If  the  poor  and  humble  toil  that  we  have  food,  must  not 
the  high  and  glorious  toil  for  him  in  return,  that  he  may  have 
light,  have  guidance,  freedom,  immortality?"  The  rich 
commonly  point  the  finger  of  scorn  at  the  poor  who  turn 
away  from  honest  work;  we  may  well  wonder  if  they  would 
work  themselves  at  such  dirty  and  dangerous  occupations. 
Many  a  charity  visitor  who  preaches  the  gospel  of  toil  is 
herself,  except  for  some  fitful  and  ineffective  "social  work,'* 
a  useless  ornament  to  society  who  hardly  knows  the  mean- 
ing of  "toil."  If  idleness  is  a  mote  in  the  eyes  of  the  poor,  it 
is  a  beam  in  the  eyes  of  the  rich.  Neither  blood  nor  rank  nor 
sex  excuses  from  the  universal  duty.  "We  must  all  toil  or 
steal  (howsoever  we  name  our  stealing),  which  is  worse."  ^ 

*  Carlyle's  writings  are  full  of  such  wholesome  declarations.  And  cf. 
W.  DeW.  Hyde:  "  An  able-bodied  man  who  does  not  contribute  to  the  world 
at  least  as  much  as  he  takes  out  of  it  is  a  beggar  and  a  thief;  whether  he 
shirks  the  duty  of  work  under  the  pretext  of  poverty  or  riches."  Cf.  also 
Tolstoy,  in  What  to  Do  ?  For  example  (from  chap,  xxvi),  "How  can  a  man 
who  considers  himself  to  be,  we  will  not  say  a  Christian,  or  an  educated  and 
humane  man,  but  simply  a  man  not  entirely  devoid  of  reason  and  of  con- 
science, —  how  can  he,  I  say,  live  in  such  a  way  that,  not  taking  part  in  the 
struggle  of  all  mankind  for  life,  he  only  swallows  up  the  labor  of  others, 
struggling  for  existence,  and  by  his  own  claims  increases  the  labor  of  those 
who  struggle,  and  the  number  of  those  who  perish  in  struggle?" 


188  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

It  is  a  false  ideal,  this  of  "  being  relieved  from  the  necessity 
of  earning  a  living  "  (unless  one  intends  to  use  that  freedom 
for  unpaid  service) ,  an  ideal  dangerous  to  social  welfare,  and 
short-sighted  for  the  individual.  Work  makes  up  a  large 
part  of  the  worth  of  life.  Drudgery  it  may  be  at  the  time, 
a  weary  round,  with  no  compensation  apparent;  but  it  is  of 
just  such  stuff  that  real  life  is  made.  What  ennobles  it, 
what  gives  it  meaning,  is  the  courageous  attack,  the  putting 
of  heart  into  work,  the  facing  of  monotony,  the  finding  of  the 
zest  of  accomplishment.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  "menial" 
work;  the  washing  of  dishes  and  the  carting  away  of  garbage 
are  just  as  necessary  and  important  as  the  running  of  a 
railway  or  the  making  of  laws.  The  real  horror  is  the  dead- 
weight of  ennui,  the  aimlessness  and  fruitlessness  of  a  life 
that  has  done  nothing  and  has  nothing  to  do.  If  the  thought 
of  the  day's  work  depresses,  it  is  probably  because  of  ill- 
health,  overfatigue,  unpleasant  surroundings  or  companions, 
because  of  worry,  or  because  the  particular  work  is  not  con- 
genial. The  finding  of  the  right  work  for  the  right  man  and 
woman  is  one  of  the  great  problems  which  we  have  hardly 
begun  to  solve.  But  all  of  these  sources  of  the  distaste  for 
work  can  normally,  or  eventually,  be  reached  and  the  evil 
remedied.  In  spite  of  the  burden  and  the  strain,  if  we  could 
have  our  way  with  the  order  of  things,  one  of  the  most  fool- 
ish things  we  could  do  would  be  to  take  away  the  necessity 
of  work.  Here,  as  usual,  personal  and  social  needs  coincide; 
in  the  working  life  alone  can  be  found  a  lasting  satisfaction 
for  the  soul  and  the  hope  of  salvation  for  society. 

Are  competitive  athletics  desirable? 

As  samples  of  the  concrete  problems  involved  in  the  ideal 
of  health  and  efficiency,  we  may  briefly  discuss  two  questions 
that  confront  particularly  the  young  man.  And  first,  that 
concerning  competitive  athletics. 


HEALTH  AND  EFFICIENCY  l&f 

In  many  ways  athletic  sports  are  of  marked  value :  — 

(1)  They  are  to  any  normal  man  or  woman,  and  especially 
to  the  yomig  who  have  not  yet  become  immersed  in  the  more 
serious  game  of  life,  one  of  the  greatest  and  most  tonic  joys. 
The  stretching  and  tension  of  healthy  muscles,  the  deep 
draughts  of  out-of-door  air,  the  excitement  of  rivalry,  the 
comradeship  of  cooperative  endeavor,  the  abandon  of  effort, 
the  glow  of  achievement,  contribute  much  in  immediate  and 
retrospective  pleasure  to  the  worth  of  living. 

(2)  WTien  not  carried  too  far,  the  physical  gain  is  clear. 
Regular  exercise  is  necessary  for  abundant  health;  and  of  all 
forms  of  exercise  the  happiest  is,  other  things  equal,  the  best. 

(3)  In  many  ways  there  are  potentialities  of  moral  gain 
in  athletics  which  do  not  result  from  ordinary  exercise. 
There  is  the  stimulus  to  intense  effort,  the  awakening  of 
strenuousness  which  may  carry  over  into  other  fields  of 
activity.  Here,  at  least,  indolence  is  impossible,  alertness  is 
demanded,  and  the  willingness  to  strive  against  obstacles. 
To  put  one's  whole  soul  into  anything  is  wholesome,  even  if 
it  be  but  a  game;  and  the  man  who  bucks  the  line  hard  on 
the  gridiron  has  begun  a  habit  which  may  serve  him  well 
when  he  meets  more  dangerous  obstacles  and  more  doughty 
opponents  on  a  larger  field. 

(4)  The  lesson  of  cooperation  taught  by  team-work  of 
any  sort  is  a  valuable  schooling.  One  of  the  prime  needs  of 
our  day  is  the  development  of  the  spirit  of  loyalty,  the  will- 
ingness to  subordinate  individual  welfare  to  that  of  a  group, 
and  to  look  upon  one's  own  work  as  part  of  a  larger  endeavor. 
The  man  who  has  learned  to  take  pride  in  making  sacrifice 
hits  is  ripe  to  respond  to  the  growing  sense  of  the  dishonor- 
ableness  of  making  personal  profit  the  aim  of  business  or  of 
politics. 

(5)  Athletic  games,  where  properly  supervised,  inculcate 
the  spirit  of  sportsmanship.    To  keep  to  the  rules  of  the 


190  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

game  in  spite  of  temptation  and  longing,  to  restrain  temper 
and  accept  the  decisions  of  the  umpire  without  complaint, 
to  take  no  unfair  advantage  and  indulge  in  no  foul  play,  to 
give  a  square  deal  to  opponents  and  ask  no  more  for  one's 
own  side,  to  endure  defeat  with  a  smile  and  without  dis- 
couragement —  surely  this  is  just  the  spirit  we  need  in 
everything.  It  is  vitally  important  that  unsportsmanlike 
conduct  should  be  ruthlessly  stamped  out  in  all  competitive 
sports,  and  that  every  team  should  prefer  to  lose  honorably 
than  to  win  unfairly.  ^ 

(6)  Wherever  they  are  taken  seriously,  athletic  contests 
require  a  preliminary  period  of  "training,"  which  includes 
abstinence  from  sex-incontinence,  from  alcohol,  smoking, 
overeating,  and  late  hours.  The  discipline  which  this  in- 
volves is  an  object-lesson  in  the  requirements  for  efficiency 
in  any  undertaking,  and  excellent  practice  in  their  fulfill- 
ment. How  far  athletes  learn  this  lesson  and  apply  it  to 
wider  spheres  of  activity,  it  would  be  interesting  to  discover. 
In  any  case,  they  have  proved  in  themselves  the  ability  to 
repress  inclination  and  find  satisfaction  in  what  makes  for 
health  and  efficiency;  and  all  who  know  the  implications  of 
"training"  have  received  a  subconscious  "suggestion"  in 
the  right  direction. 

The  other  side  of  the  problem  is  this :  — 

(1)  Competitive  athletics,  if  taken  seriously,  —  as,  for 

*  There  has  been  a  good  deal  of  criticism  of  American  intercollegiate 
athletics  on  the  ground  of  their  fostering  unsportsmanlike  conduct.  A 
recent  paper  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  (by  C.  A.  Stewart,  vol.  113,  p.  153) 
concludes  with  this  recommendation:  "A  forceful  presentation  of  the  facts 
of  the  situation,  with  an  appeal  to  the  innate  sense  of  honor  of  the  under- 
graduates; such  a  revision  of  the  rules  as  will  retain  only  those  based  upon 
essential  fairness;  and  a  strict  supervision  by  the  faculty;  —  upon  the  suc- 
cess of  these  three  measures  rests  the  hope  that  college  athletics  may  be 
purged  of  trickery  and  the  spirit  of  'get  away  with  it.'  ...  A  few  men 
expelled  for  lying  about  eligibility,  and  a  few  teams  disbanded  because  of 
unfair  play,  would  arouse  undergraduates  with  a  wholesome  jolt." 


HEALTH  AND  EFFICIENCY  191 

example,  in  intercollegiate  contests,  —  inevitably  take  more 
time  and  energy  than  their  importance  warrants.  A  mem- 
ber of  a  college  football  or  baseball  team  can  do  little  else 
during  the  season.  Studies  are  neglected,  intellectual  inter- 
ests are  subordinated,  college  figures  essentially  as  a  group 
of  men  endeavoring  to  beat  another  college  on  the  field. 
If  a  man  is  bright  he  may  "keep  up  with"  his  studies,  but 
his  intellectual  profit  is  meager;  his  energies  are  being 
absorbed  elsewhere.  This  phenomenon  has  given  rise  to 
much  satire  and  to  much  perplexity  on  the  part  of  college 
administrations.  A  few  have  gone  so  far  as  to  banish  inter- 
collegiate contests,  asserting  that  the  purpose  of  coming  to 
college  is  primarily  to  learn  to  use  the  brain,  not  the 
muscles. 

(2)  The  strain  of  intense  rivalry  is  too  severe  on  the  body. 
It  is  now  known  that  the  intercollegiate  athlete  is  very  prob- 
ably sacrificing  some  of  his  life  when  he  throws  his  utmost 
effort  into  the  game  or  the  race.  The  length  of  life  of  the  big 
athletes  averages  considerably  shorter  than  that  of  the  more 
moderate  exercisers.  From  the  physical  point  of  view,  inter- 
class  or  interfraternity  contests,  not  taken  too  earnestly, 
are  far  better  than  the  intercollegiate  struggles.  They  also 
have  the  advantage  that  far  more  can  participate.  The 
problem  before  our  college  authorities  and  leaders  of  student 
sentiment  is  how  to  check  the  fierceness  of  the  big  contests 
—  shortening  them,  perhaps,  possibly  forbidding  entirely 
the  more  strenuous  —  and  how  to  provide  sports  for  all 
members  of  the  college;  so  that,  instead  of  a  few  overstrained 
athletes  and  a  lot  of  fellows  who  underexercise,  we  shall  see 
every  man  out  on  the  field  daily,  and  no  one  overdoing.  This 
ideal  necessitates  far  larger  athletic  grounds  than  most  of 
our  colleges  have  reserved.  It  may  necessitate  the  abolition 
of  some  of  the  big  contests  that  have  been  the  excitement  oi 
many  thousands.  But  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  sports 


192  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

are  not  life;  they  are  prelude  and  preparation  for  life;  they 
must  not  be  allowed  to  usurp  the  chief  place  in  a  man's 
thoughts  or  to  unfit  him  for  his  greatest  after-usefulness.^ 

Is  it  wrong  to  smoke? 

Statistics  taken  with  care  at  many  American  colleges  show 
with  apparent  conclusiveness  that  the  use  of  tobacco  is 
physically  and  mentally  deleterious  to  young  men.^  It 
seems  that  smokers  lose  in  lung  capacity,  are  stunted  slightly 
in  their  growth,  are  lessened  in  their  endurance,  develop  far 
more  than  their  proportion  of  eye  and  nerve  troubles,  furnish 
far  less  than  their  proportion  of  the  athletes  who  win  posi- 
tions on  college  teams,  furnish  far  less  than  their  proportion 
of  scholarship  men,  and  far  more  than  their  proportion  of 
conditions  and  failures.  It  is  perhaps  too  early  to  be  quite 
sure  of  these  results;  but  in  all  probability  further  experi- 
ment will  confirm  them,  and  make  it  certain  that  tobacco 
is  physically  harmful  —  as  has  long  been  recognized  by 
trainers  for  athletic  contests.  The  harm  to  adults  seems  to 
be  less  marked;  perhaps  to  some  it  is  inappreciable.  And  if 
there  is  appreciable  harm,  whether  it  is  great  enough  to 
counterbalance  the  satisfaction  which  a  confirmed  smoker 
takes  in  his  cigar  or  pipe,  or  any  worse  than  the  restlessness 
which  the  sacrifice  of  it  might  engender,  is  one  of  those 
delicate  personal  problems  that  one  can  hardly  solve  for 
another.  But  certainly  where  the  habit  is  not  formed,  the 
loss  of  tobacco  involves  no  important  deprivation;  its  use  is 
chiefly  a  social  custom  which  can  be  discontinued  without  ill 
effects.  Effort  should  be  made  to  keep  the  young  from  form- 
ing the  habit;  college  "smokers,"  where  free  cigarettes  and 

1  Cf.  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  90,  p.  534;  Outlook,  vol.  98,  p.  597. 

*  See,  e.g.,  in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly  for  October,  1912,  a  summary 
by  Dr.  F.  J.  Pack  of  an  investigation  covering  fourteen  colleges.  Similar 
investigations  have  been  made  by  several  others,  with  generally  similai 
results. 


HEALTH  AND  EFFICIENCY  18S 

cigars  are  furnished,  should  be  superseded  by  "rallies," 
where  the  same  amount  of  money  could  provide  some  light 
and  harmless  refreshment. 

The  use  of  tobacco  —  and  particularly  of  cigarettes  — 
has  increased  very  rapidly  during  the  last  twenty  years. 
In  the  United  States  about  two  billion  dollars  annually  are 
now  spent  for  tobacco  and  accessories;  perhaps  twenty  bil- 
lion cigarettes  a  year  are  consumed.  Apart  from  the  mat- 
ter of  health  and  efficiency,  it  may  be  sharply  questioned 
w^hether  such  a  vast  sum  should  not  be  more  fruitfully  ex- 
pended. 

This  is  not  one  of  the  important  problems.  But,  after  all, 
everything  is  important;  and  men  must,  and  ultimately 
will,  learn  to  find  their  happiness  in  things  that  forward, 
instead  of  thwarting,  their  great  interests;  what  makes  at  all 
against  health  and  efficiency  —  when  it  is  so  needless  and 
artificial  a  habit  as  smoking,  so  mildly  pleasant  and  so 
purely  selfish  —  must  be  rooted  out  of  desire.  We  shall  not 
brand  smoking  as  a  sin,  hardly  as  a  vice;  but  the  man  who 
wishes  to  make  the  most  of  his  life  will  avoid  it  himself,  and 
the  man  who  wishes  to  work  for  the  general  welfare  will  put 
his  influence  and  example  against  it. 

H.  C.  King,  Rational  Living,  chap,  vi,  sees,  i,  n.  J.  Payot,  The 
Education  of  the  Will,  bk.  iii,  sec.  iv.  J.  MacCunn,  The  Making  of 
Character,  pt.  ii,  chap.  ii.  W.  Hutchinson,  Handbook  of  Health. 
L.  H.  Gulick,  The  Efficient  Life.  F.  Paulsen,  Syatem  of  Ethics,  bko 
III,  cliap.  III.  T.  Roosevelt,  The  Strenuous  Life.  P.  G.  Hamerton, 
The  Intellectual  Life,  pt.  i.  H.  Spencer,  Education,  chap.  iv.  C.  A. 
Greene,  The  Art  of  Keeping  Well.  C.  W.  Saleeby,  Health,  Strength, 
and  Happiness.    R.  C.  Cabot,  What  Men  Live  By,  pt.  i. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  ALCOHOL  PROBLEM 

Of  all  the  problems  relating  to  health  and  efficiency  there 
is  none  graver  than  that  of  the  narcotics.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  tobacco,  which  is  probably,  for  adults,  in  moderation 
but  mildly,  if  at  all,  deleterious,  their  use  is  fraught  with 
serious  danger.  The  exact  physiological  effects  of  the  several 
narcotics  are  different,  but  their  general  effect  and  their  at- 
traction for  users  are  similar. 

The  opium  and  cola  derivatives  —  morphia,  heroin, 
codein,  cocaine  —  are  the  worst  of  these  habit-forming  and 
health-destroying  drugs.  And  they  are  being  used,  not  only 
in  the  East  (to  the  shame  of  the  Western  nations  and  Japan, 
that  have  winked  at  a  traffic  very  profitable  to  some  of  their 
merchants),  but  in  Europe  and  America,  in  an  increasing 
and  alarming  degree.  The  harm  caused  by  these  drugs  is, 
however,  so  patent,  and  enlightened  opinion  so  united  in 
opposing  them,  that  space  will  not  be  given  here  to  detail 
the  indictment  against  them.  Their  sale  is  not  pushed  by 
such  powerful  interests  as  have  fostered  the  use  of  alcoholic 
drinks;  and  by  the  vigilant  enforcement  of  existing  laws 
they  can  be  kept  from  general  use.  If  necessary,  an  inter- 
national control  of  the  cultivation  of  the  poppy  and  the  cola 
plant  can  forever  remove  this  so  needless  form  of  human 
suffering. 

With  alcohol  the  case  is  different.  A  large  minority  of 
opinion  in  the  United  States,  and  the  majority  opinion  al- 
most everywhere  else,  still  clings  to  the  ancient  and  alluring 
habit  of  alcoholic  self -narcotization.    Attempts  will  doubt- 


THE  ALCOHOL  PROBLEM  195 

less  recurrently  be  made  to  construe  the  Eighteenth 
Amendment  loosely  and  legalize  the  sale  of  light  wines  and 
beers.  On  the  other  hand,  the  fight  for  prohibition  is  on  all 
over  the  rest  of  the  v/orld.  It  is  still  a  very  live  issue,  and 
one  upon  which  every  student  of  contemporary  moral  prob- 
lems should  be  thoroughly  informed. 

What  are  the  causes  of  the  use  of  alcoholic  drinks? 

(1)  We  may  dismiss  as  relatively  unimportant  the  pleas 
that  alcoholic  liquors  are  desirable  for  their  pleasant  taste 
or  for  their  food  value.  Plenty  of  other  delicious  drinks  are 
available  without  their  toxic  effects.  And  certainly,  for  nu- 
trition received,  the  alcoholic  drinks  are  among  the  most 
expensive  foods,  to  be  ranked  with  caviare  and  pdie  de  foie 
gras.  Beer  is  the  most  nutritious  of  them,  and  the  yeast  in 
it  is  perhaps,  for  some  people,  a  valuable  aid  to  assimilation 
of  food.  But  the  non-alcoholic  malt  liquors  are  equally  val- 
uable in  this  respect;  and  an  equal  amount  of  money  spent 
on  bread  would  give  about  thirty  times  the  amount  of  nutri- 
tion. Alcoholic  liquors  as  food  are,  as  has  been  said,  like 
gunpowder  as  fuel  —  very  costly  and  very  dangerous.^ 

(2)  A  much  commoner  plea  for  drinking  rests  upon  its 
sociability.  But  this  is  a  matter  of  convention  which  can 
readily  enough  be  altered.  There  is  nothing  inherently  more 
sociable  in  the  drinking  of  wine  than  in  the  drinking  of 
grape- juice,  or  coffee,  or  chocolate,  or  tea.  Indeed,  one  may 
well  ask  why  the  chief  social  bond  between  men  should  con- 
sist in  drinking  liquids  side  by  side!  Games  and  sports, 
in  which  wit  is  pitted  against  wit,  or  which  bring  men 
together  in  happy  cooperation,  together  with  the  great 
resource  of  conversation,  are  more  socially  binding  than 
any  drinks. 

1  See  H.  S.  Williams,  Alcohol ,  p.  133/.;  H.  S.  Warner,  Social  Welfare 
and  the  Liquor  Problem,  p.  80  Jf.,  and  bibliography,  p.  95. 


196  PERSONAL   MORALITY 

(3)  More  important  than  any  of  these  causes  is  the  crav- 
ing for  a  stimulant.  The  monotony  of  work,  the  fatigue 
toward  the  end  of  the  day,  the  severity  of  our  Northern 
cHmate,  the  longing  for  intenser  living,  lead  men  to  seek  to 
apply  the  whip  to  their  flagging  energies.  This  stimulus  to 
the  body  is,  however,  largely  if  not  wholly,  illusory.  The 
mental-emotional  effects,  noted  in  the  following  paragraph, 
give  the  drinker  the  impression  that  he  is  physically  forti- 
fied; but  objective  tests  show  that,  after  a  very  brief  period, 
the  dominant  effect  upon  the  organism  is  depressant.  The 
apparent  increase  in  bodily  warmth,  so  often  experienced, 
is  a  subjective  illusion;  in  reality  alcohol  lowers  the  tempera- 
ture and  diminishes  resistance  to  cold.  Arctic  explorers 
have  to  discard  it  entirely.  The  old  idea  of  helping  to  cure 
snake-bite,  hydrophobia,  etc.,  by  whiskey  was  sheer  mis- 
take; the  patient  has  actually  much  less  of  a  chance  if  so 
drugged.  Only  for  an  immediate  and  transitory  need,  such 
as  faintness  or  shock,  is  the  quickly  passing  stimulating 
power  of  alcohol  useful;  and  even  for  such  purposes  other 
stimulants  are  more  valuable.  Reputable  physicians  have 
almost  wholly  ceased  to  use  it.^ 

(4)  The  one  real  value  of  alcohol  to  man  has  been  the 
boon  of  stimulating  his  emotional  and  impulsive  life,  bring- 
ing him  an  elevation  of  spirits,  drowning  his  sorrows,  help- 
ing him  to  forget,  helping  to  free  his  mind  from  the  burden 
of  care,  anxiety,  and  regret.  As  ^William  James,  with  his 
unerring  discernment,  wrote  twenty -five  years  ago:  **The 
reason  for  craving  alcohol  is  that  it  is  an  anaesthetic,  even  in 
moderate  quantities.  It  obliterates  a  part  of  the  field  of 
consciousness  and  abolishes  collateral  trains  of  thought."  ^ 
This  use,  in  relieving  brain-tension,  in  bringing  a  transient 

1  See  H.  S.  Williams,  oy.  cit.,  p.  4/.,  124-27;  H.  S.  Warner,  op.  ciL, 
pp.  84/. 

2  Tolstoy  also  hit  the  nail  on  the  head  in  his  little  essay.  Why  do  Men 
f^twpcjy  Themselves  ? 


THE  ALCOHOL  PROBLEM  197 

cheer  and  comfort  to  poor,  overworked,  worried,  remorseful 
men,  is  not  to  be  despised.  Dull  lives  are  vivified  by  it,  a 
fleeting  anaesthesia  of  unhappy  memories  and  longings  is 
effected,  and  for  the  moment  Hfe  seems  worth  living. 

Without  considering  yet  the  physical  penalty  that  must 
be  paid  for  this  evanescent  freedom,  we  may  make  the 
obvious  remark  that  it  is  a  morally  dangerous  freedom.  As 
the  Odyssey  has  it,  "Wine  leads  to  folly,  making  even  the 
wise  to  love  immoderately,  to  dance,  and  to  utter  what  had 
better  have  been  kept  silent."  Alcohol  slackens  the  higher, 
more  complicated,  mental  functions  —  our  conscience,  our 
scruples,  our  reason  —  and  leaves  freer  from  inhibition  our 
lower  passions  and  instincts.  We  cannot  afford  thus  to 
submerge  our  better  natures,  and  leave  the  field  to  our  lower 
selves;  it  is  a  dangerous  short  cut  to  happiness.  A  far  safer 
and  more  permanently  useful  procedure  for  the  individual 
would  be  so  to  live  by  his  reason  and  his  conscience  that  he 
would  not  need  to  stupefy  them,  to  forget  his  fife  as  he  is 
shaping  it  from  day  to  day.  And  the  lesson  to  the  com- 
munity is  so  to  brighten  the  lives  of  the  poor  with  normal, 
wholesome  pleasures  and  recreations,  so  to  lift  from  them 
the  burdens  of  poverty  and  social  unjustice,  that  they  will 
not  so  much  need  to  plunge  into  the  grateful  oblivion  of  the 
wine-cup. 

(5)  The  most  tenacious  hold  of  alcoholism  has  lain,  how- 
ever, in  two  things  not  yet  enumerated.  The  one  is,  that 
much  use  of  alcohol  creates  a  pathological  craving  for  it;  the 
man  who  is  accustomed  to  his  beer  or  whiskey  is  restless  and 
depressed  if  he  cannot  get  it,  and  will  sacrifice  much  to  still 
for  the  nonce  that  insatiable  longing.  The  other  and  even 
more  important  fact  is,  that  the  sale  of  liquor  is  immensely 
profitable  to  the  manufacturers  and  sellers.  The  fighters  for 
prohibition  everywhere  encounter  the  desperate  opposition 
of  those  who  have  become  slaves  to  the  drug  —  many  of 


198  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

whom  may  never  get  intoxicated,  and  would  resent  the  term 
"slaves,'*  but  who  have  formed  the  abnormal  habit  and 
cannot  without  discomfort  get  rid  of  it.  They  have  to  meet 
the  still  fiercer  hostility  of  those  who  are  making  money 
from  the  sale  of  liquor  and  do  not  intend  to  let  go  their 
opportunity. 

What  are  the  evils  that  result  from  alcoholic  liquors? 

The  one  real  value  of  alcohol,  we  have  said,  lies  in  its 
temporary  mental  effects.  It  raises  the  hedonic  tone  of  con- 
sciousness; it  brings  about,  when  taken  in  proper  amounts, 
the  well-known  happy-go-lucky,  scruple-free,  expansive  state 
of  mind.   What  now  is  the  price  that  must  be  paid  for  its  use? 

(1)  The  physical  harmfulness  of  even  Hght  drinking  is 
considerable. 

(a)  Alcohol,  even  in  slight  doses,  as  in  a  glass  of  wine  or 
beer,  has  poisonous  effects  upon  some  of  the  bodily  functions, 
which  are  clearly  revealed  by  scientific  experiment.  ^  Hence 
the  temporary  cheer  must  be  paid  for  with  usury  by  a  much 
longer  depression,  resulting  from  the  poisonous  effects  of 
alcohol  upon  the  body.  A  jolly  evening  is  followed  by  the 
familiar  symptoms  of  the  morning  after.  The  extent  of  the 
physical  and  mental  depression  caused  is  not  always  realized, 
because  it  is  spread  out  over  a  considerable  period  of  time 
and  may  not  be  acute;  a  healthy  person  can  stand  a  good 
deal  without  being  conscious  of  the  ill  effects.  But  they  are 
there.  In  bodily  vigor,  and  so  in  mental  buoyancy,  the 
abstainer  is  in  the  end  better  off  than  if  he  drank  even  a 
little,  or  seldom. 

*  See,  for  one  testimony  out  of  very  many  in  medical  literature,  an  article 
by  Dr.  Herbert  Mcintosh  in  the  Journal  of  Advanced  Therapeutics  for  April, 
1912,  p.  167:  "Alcohol  and  ether  are  the  two  great  enemies  of  the  electro- 
chemical properties  of  the  salts  necessary  to  organic  life."  He  speaks  of 
"paralysis  of  the  vaso-constrictor  nerves,"  "inhibition  of  the  cortical 
centers,"  etc. 


THE  ALCOHOL  PROBLEM  199 

(6)  Careful  and  repeated  experiments  show  clearly  that 
even  a  little  drinking  —  a  glass  or  two  of  beer  or  wine  a 
day  —  decreases  the  capacity  for  both  muscular  and  mental 
work.  This  loss  of  ability  is  not  perceptible  to  the  drinker; 
he  often  feels  an  illusory  glow  of  power;  but  he  cannot  do  as 
much.  Recent  experiments,  conducted  with  the  utmost 
scientific  caution,  reveal  a  distinct  loss  in  working  efficiency.  ^ 

(c)  Even  a  moderate  use  of  alcohol  increases  liability  to 
disease  and  shortens  the  chances  of  life.  In  any  case  of 
exposure  to  or  contraction  of  disease,  the  total  abstainer  has 
a  proved  advantage  over  even  the  light  drinker.  The  Britisli 
life  insurance  companies  reckon  that  at  the  age  of  twenty  a 
total  abstainer  has  an  average  prospect  of  life  of  forty-four 
years,  a  temperate  regular  drinker  a  prospect  of  thirty-one 
years,  and  a  heavy  drinker  of  fifteen  years.  Many  other 
factors  enter  into  the  individual  situation,  of  course;  we 
know  many  cases  where  inveterate  drinkers  have  lived  to  a 
ripe  old  age;  it  takes  a  great  deal  to  break  the  iron  constitu- 
tions of  some  men.  But  averages  tell  the  story.  An  author- 
ity on  tuberculosis  states  that  "if  for  no  other  reason  than 
the  prevention  of  tuberculosis,  state  prohibition  would  be 
justified."  The  use  of  alcohol  predisposes  the  body  to  many 
kinds  of  disease;  and  according  to  conservative  figures,  ap- 
proximately seventy  thousand  deaths  yearly  in  the  United 
States  were  caused  by  alcoholism  and  diseases  that  owed 
their  grip  to  the  use  of  alcohol.  Besides  this,  a  great  deal  of 
insanity  and  chronic  invalidism,  and  a  large  proportion  of 
deaths  after  operations,  were  due  to  this  cause.^ 

(d)  The  chances  of  losing  children  at  birth,  or  in  early 

*  Professor  Dodge's  experiments  supersede  the  older  and  less  scientific 
data.  See  bibl-iography.  They  had  some  realization  of  this  truth  even  in 
the  days  of  the  Iliad.  Hector  says,  "Bring  me  no  luscious  wines,  lest  they 
unnerve  my  limbs  and  make  me  lose  my  wonted  powers  and  strength." 

2  See  H.  S.  Williams,  op.  cit.,  pp.  25-43,  149,  150;  H.  S.  Warner,  op.  dt., 
chap.  IV,  and  bibliography  at  end. 


200  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

infancy,  and  the  chances  of  begetting  feeble-minded  or 
degenerate  children,  are  markedly  greater  for  even  modern 
ate  drinkers  than  for  abstainers.  Children  of  total  abstain- 
ers have  a  great  advantage,  on  the  average,  in  size,  stature, 
bodily  vigor,  intellectual  power;  they  stand,  on  the  average, 
between  a  year  and  two  years  ahead  in  class  of  the  children 
of  moderate  drinkers,  they  have  less  than  half  as  many  eye, 
ear,  and  other  physical  defects.  This  proved  influence  of 
even  light  drinking  upon  the  vitality  and  normality  trans* 
mitted  to  children  should  be  the  most  serious  of  indictments 
against  self-indulgence.  Truly  the  sins  of  the  fathers  are 
visited  upon  the  second  and  third  generation.^ 

(2)  The  economic  waste  is  enormous. 

(a)  Over  two  billion  dollars  a  year  were  spent  by  the 
people  of  the  United  States  for  intoxicating  beverages  be- 
fore the  amendment  was  passed.  About  a  hundred  million 
bushels  of  grain  were  consumed  annually  in  their  production, 
besides  the  grapes  used  for  wines.  Nor  did  the  money  spent 
for  liquors  go  in  any  appreciable  degree  into  the  pockets  of 
the  farmers  who  raise  the  grains;  less  than  a  thirtieth  part 
found  its  way  to  them,  the  brewers,  distillers,  and  retailers 
getting  about  two  thirds.  The  money  invested  in  the  beer 
industry  alone  was  in  1909  over  $550,000,000.^  The  impor- 
tance of  our  former  liquor  bill  can  be  realized  by  a  simple 
computation;  it  would  suffice  to  pay  two  million  men  three 
dollars  a  day,  six  days  in  the  week,  year  in  and  year  out;  it 
would  suffice  to  build  four  or  five  Panama  Canals  (at 
$400,000,000)  a  year.  When  we  reckon  up  the  present  liquor 
bill  of  the  world,  a  sum  many  times  this,  we  can  see  what  a 
frightful  waste  of  man's  resources  is  going  on;  for  not  only 

^  See  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods,  vol.  ix, 
p.  234;  H.  S.  Williams,  op.  cit.,  pp.  44-47. 

2  See  Independent,  vol.  67,  p.  1326;  Year-Books  of  the  Anti-Saloon 
League.  For  this  whole  subject  of  the  cost  of  the  liquor  trade,  see  chap. 
V,  in  IL  S.  Warner,  op.  cit.,  and  the  bibliography  appended. 


THE  ALCOHOL  PROBLEM  201 

is  there  no  return  in  production,  but  there  is  a  tremendous 
additional  drain  of  wealth  caused  indirectly  thereby. 

(6)  Among  the  factors  in  this  additional  drain  of  wealth, 
which  must  be  added  to  the  figures  given  above  in  estimating 
the  total  financial  loss  to  the  community,  wxre:  the  loss  in 
efficiency  of  workers  through  the  —  usually  unrealized  — 
toxic  effects  of  alcohol ;  the  loss  of  the  lives  of  adult  workers 
due  to  alcoholic  poisoning  —  an  annual  loss  greater  than 
that  of  the  whole  Civil  War;  the  support  by  the  State  of 
paupers,  two  fifths  of  whom,  it  is  estimated,  owed  their 
status  to  alcoholism;  ^  the  support  by  the  State  of  the  in- 
sane, from  a  quarter  to  a  half  of  whom  owed  their  insanity 
directly  or  indirectly  to  alcohol ;  ^  the  support  of  destitute 
and  deserted  children;  ^  the  maintenance  of  prisons,  of 
courts,  and  police  —  the  Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Labor 
Statistics  showed  that  eighty -four  per  cent  of  all  criminals 
then  under  conviction  in  the  correctional  institutions  of  that 
State  committed  their  crimes  under  the  influence  of  alcohol.'* 
WTien  we  add  to  this  the  still  greater  numbers  of  incapables 
supported  by  their  families  and  friends,  we  realize  that  the 
national  drink  bill  was  really  very  much  greater  than  the 
mere  sums  spent  for  liquor.  Comparative  statistics  show 
graphically  how  strikingly  pauperism,  crime,  and  destitution 
are  diminished  by  prohibition.  It  is  variously  estimated  that 
a  fourth  or  a  third  or  more  of  all  acute  poverty  was  due  di- 
rectly or  indirectly  to  alcohol.  It  is  a  pity  that  the  financial 
burden  of  the  war,  and  the  heavy  increase  in  the  cost  of  liv- 
ing, conceal  from  us  the  great  gain  made  by  stopping  this 
leakage  of  the  national  wealth.  Bad  as  conditions  now  are, 
they  would  be  far  w^orse  without  prohibition. 

(3)  The  moral  harm  of  alcohol  is  comparable  to  its  physi- 
cal and  economic  harm. 

1  See  H.  S.  Williams,  op.  cii.,  p.  85/.  2  /^,^-^.,  p.  63  Jf. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  89/.  <  lUiJ.,  p.  lijf. 


202  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

(a)  As  we  noted  when  considering  the  value  of  alcohol, 
the  higher  nature  is  stupefied,  leaving  the  emotions  less 
controlled.  The  silliness,  the  irritability,  the  glumness,  the 
violence,  the  lust  of  men  are  given  freer  rein.  The  effect  of 
alcohol  is  coarsening,  brutalizing;  we  are  not  our  best  selves 
under  its  influence.  The  judgment  is  dulled,  the  spirit  of 
recklessness  is  stimulated  —  an  impatience  of  restraint  and 
a  craving  for  further  excitement.  Even  after  the  palpable 
effects  of  a  potation  have  disappeared,  a  permanent  altera- 
tion in  the  brain  remains,  which  makes  it  likely  that  the 
drinker  will  "go  farther"  next  time  or  the  time  after.  The 
accumulation  of  such  effects  leads  finally  to  the  complete 
demoralization  of  character,  to  the  point  where  a  man's 
higher  nature  can  no  longer  keep  control  over  his  conduct. 
This  is  what  is  meant  by  saying  that  alcohol  undermines  the 
will  power.  ^  In  particular,  sexual  sins  are  more  readily  com- 
mitted after  drinking;  and  the  gravity  of  the  sex  problem  is 
so  great  that  this  fact  alone  justifies  the  banishment  of  al- 
cohol, the  greatest  of  sexual  stimulants. ^ 

(6)  A  very  large  proportion  of  the  crimes  committed  were 
committed  under  the  influence  of  alcohol.  In  Massachusetts, 
for  example  (in  1895),  only  five  per  cent  of  convictions  for 
crime  were  of  abstainers.  In  general,  statistics  show  that 
from  a  half  to  three  quarters  of  the  total  amount  of  crime 
had  drinking  for  a  direct  contributing  cause.  Wlien  we  add 
to  this  the  crime-inducing  influence  of  the  poverty,  ill- 
health,  and  immoral  social  conditions  caused  by  drink,  we 
can  form  some  idea  of  the  moral  indictment  against  alcohol.^ 

1  See  H.  S.  Williams,  op.  cit.,  p.  56  #. 

2  Cf,  Jane  Addams,  A  New  Conscience  and  an  Ancient  Evil,  p.  189: 
"Even  a  slight  exhilaration  from  alcohol  relaxes  the  moral  sense  and 
throws  a  sentimental  or  adventm-ous  glamour  over  an  aspect  of  life  from 
which  a  decent  young  man  would  ordinarily  recoil;  and  its  continued  use 
stimulates  the  senses  at  the  very  moment  when  the  intellectual  and  moral 
inhibitions  are  lessened." 

^  H.  S,  Warner,  op.  cit.,  p.  261^. 


THE  ALCOHOL  PROBLEM  203 

So  many  other  baneful  influences  have  affected  our  society 
as  a  result  of  the  war  that  the  gain  through  prohibition  is 
not  yet  as  obvious  as  it  will  be  when  social  conditions  become 
more  normal.  But  the  earlier  experience  of  *'  dry  '*  vs.  "  wet " 
States  was  conclusive. 

(g)  The  liquor  trade  was  one  of  the  most  powerful  of  all 
"interests"  in  the  corruption  of  politics.^  It  was  fired  by  a 
grim  determination  to  keep  its  business  from  extermination, 
and  always  maintained  a  powerful  lobby  at  Washington 
and  at  the  State  capitals.  In  many  places  it  had  for  years  a 
strangle  hold  on  legislation.  It  allied  itself  with  the  other 
vicious  interests  that  live  by  exploiting  human  weakness,  it 
had  a  vast  revenue  for  the  purchasing  of  votes,  and,  in  the 
saloon,  the  easiest  of  channels  for  reaching  the  bribable 
voter.  The  fact  that,  in  spite  of  its  power,  it  has  been  de- 
stroyed in  this  country  is  one  of  the  hopeful  signs  for  the 
future  of  political  democracy. 

In  sum,  we  can  say  that  the  evils  caused  by  alcohol, 
instead  of  having  been  exaggerated,  were  never  until  re- 
cently sufficiently  realized.  The  old  "temperance"  re- 
formers, though  their  data  were  inadequate,  were  funda- 
mentally right. 

What  should  be  the  attitude  of  the  individual  toward  alco- 
holic liquors? 

In  the  light  of  our  present  knowledge,  the  attitude  toward 
liquor  demanded  of  the  individual  by  morality  admits  of  no 
debate.  He  may  love  dearly  his  wines  or  his  beer,  but  his 
enjoyment  is  won  at  too  dear  a  cost  to  himself  and  others; 
his  support  of  the  liquor  trade  is  very  selfish.  He  has  no 
right  to  poison  himself,  to  impair  his  health  and  efficiency, 
as  even  a  little  drinking  will  do.  He  has  no  right  to  run  the 
^  H.  S.  Warner,  op.  cit.,  chap.  xi. 


204  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

risk  of  becoming  the  slave  of  alcohol,  as  so  many  of  the  most 
promising  men  have  become;  the  effect  of  the  drug  is  insidi- 
ous, and  no  man  can  be  sure  that  he  will  be  able  to  resist  it. 
He  has  no  right  to  spend  in  harmful  self-indulgence  money 
that  might  be  spent  for  useful  ends.  He  has  no  right  to 
incur  the,  however  immeasurable,  moral  and  intellectual 
impairment  which  is  effected  by  even  rather  moderate  drink- 
ing. He  has  no  right  to  bequeath  to  his  children  a  weak- 
ened heritage  of  vitality.  He  has  no  right,  by  his  example, 
to  encourage  others,  who  may  be  far  more  deeply  harmed 
than  he,  in  the  use  of  the  drug;  "let  no  man  put  a  stumbling- 
block  or  an  occasion  to  fall  in  his  brother's  way."  The  influ- 
ence of  every  man  who  is  amenable  to  altruistic  motives  is 
needed  against  liquor,  wherever  it  is  now  sold;  the  great 
advantages  gained  by  the  United  States  in  freeing  itself 
from  this  ancient  curse  must  be  shown  to  the  world. 

It  is  a  genuine  hardship  to  those  who  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  their  beer  or  whiskey  to  have  to  give  it  up.  It  is  a 
pity  that  future  generations  in  this  country  must  miss  the 
delights  of  rare  wines  and  cordials,  highballs  and  cocktails 
and  punches,  with  their  accompaniment  of  conviviality 
and  good-fellowship.  So  much  of  the  world's  literature  is 
saturated  with  alcohol !  Our  children  will  inevitably  have 
their  wistful  moments  when  they  will  long  to  taste  these  now 
forbidden  joys.  For  this  reason  it  is  highly  important  that, 
at  least  for  a  generation  to  come,  they  should  be  made  to 
realize  clearly  the  evils  that  made  it  necessary  to  banish 
alcohol. 

The  former  Kaiser  remarked,  a  few  years  before  the  Great 
"War,  that  when  it  came  success  would  belong  to  the  army 
that  used  the  least  alcohol.  That  army  was  the  American 
army.  In  the  competition  between  nations  that  has  ensued 
the  United  States  has  an  equally  great  advantage,  if  it  is  to 
be,  for  some  years,  the  one  great  nation  of  abstainers. 


THE  ALCOHOL  PROBLEM  205 

What  should  be  our  attitude  toward  the  use  of  alcoholic 
liquors  by  others  ? 

The  consideration  of  this  question  falls  properly  under  the 
head  of  "Public  Morality."  But  it  will  be  more  convenient 
to  treat  it  here,  following  the  presentation  of  the  facts  con- 
cerning alcohol.  The  right  of  the  community  to  interfere 
with  the  conduct  of  its  members  will  be  discussed  in  chapter 
XXVIII,  and  we  must  assume  here  the  result  therein  reached, 
that  whatever  is  deemed  necessary  for  the  greatest  welfare 
of  the  community  as  a  whole  may  legitimately  be  required 
of  its  individual  members,  however  it  may  cross  their  desires 
or  however  they  may  consider  the  matter  their  private  con- 
cern. The  argument  against  prohibition  on  the  ground  that 
it  interferes  with  individual  rights  would  apply  also  to  child- 
labor  legislation,  to  legislation  against  street  soliciting  by 
prostitutes  or  the  sale  of  indecent  pictures,  and,  more 
obviously  still,  against  anti-opium  and  anti-cocaine  legisla- 
tion. As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  older  individualistic  point  of 
view  has  been  generally  abandoned  now,  and  we  are  free  to 
discuss  what  is  desirable  for  the  general  welfare.* 

We  may  at  once  say  that  whatever  method  can  most 
quickly  and  thoroughly  root  out  the  evil  is  best  to  adopt. 
Different  methods  may  be  more  or  less  efficacious  in  differenL 
places;  it  is  a  matter  for  legitimate  opportunism.  But  the 
goal  to  be  kept  in  sight  can  only  be  world-wide  prohibition  of 
the  manufacture  and  sale  of  all  alcoholic  liquors  for  bev- 
erage purposes.  Education  on  the  matter,  and  exhortation 
to  personal  abstinence,  must  be  continued.  But  education 
and  exhortation  are  not  alone  sufficient;  self-restraint  can- 
not be  counted  on,  constraint  must  be  employed.    "High 

^  For  the  arguments  for  prohibition,  see  H.  S.  Warner,  op.  cit.,  chaps. 
IX,  XII.  Artman,  The  Legalized  OiUlaw.  Fehlandt,  A  Century  of  Drink 
Reform.     "Wheeler,  Prohibition. 


206  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

License"  and  "Regulation"  have  been  thoroughly  tried 
and  have  not  checked  the  evil;  moreover,  it  has  been  a 
serious  blunder  to  make  the  State  or  municipality  dependent 
upon  the  liquor  trade  for  revenue,  and  therefore  eager  to 
retain  it.  The  '* State  Monopoly"  system  did  not  prove  a 
success  in  this  country  in  lessening  the  evil;  it  made  the 
liquor  power  a  more  sinister  influence  than  ever  in  politics. 
If  liquor  must  be  sold,  the  "Company,"  or  Scandinavian 
system,  which  eliminates  the  factor  of  private  profits,  with- 
out fostering  political  corruption,  is  probably  the  least 
harmful  method  of  selling. 

But  no  method  of  selling  liquor  can  be  more  than  a  tem- 
porary expedient.  We  must  cooperate  with  reformers  in 
other  countries  to  extend  the  boundaries  of  "dry"  territory. 
"Local  option"  is  of  great  value  at  a  certain  stage  of  a 
people's  education,  and  is  doubtless  in  some  countries  the 
best  attainable  status  for  the  present.  But  it  should  be  re- 
garded as  a  means  of  gradually  extending  "dry"  territory 
rather  than  as  a  permanent  solution.  The  example  of  the 
United  States  will  be,  of  course,  of  enormous  value  in  push- 
ing the  campaign  elsewhere.  Already  (1920)  New  Zealand 
has  come  within  an  ace  of  adopting  prohibition;  Australia, 
Canada,  South  Africa,  and  some  of  the  South  American 
nations  may  be  expected  soon  to  fall  in  line.  Russia  since 
the  early  days  of  the  war  has  been  largely  dry;  but  the  ter- 
rible effects  of  the  war  in  that  unhappy  country  conceal  the 
beneficent  results  of  the  banishing  of  vodka.  China,  which 
has  waged  such  a  gallant  war  against  opium  (thrust  upon 
her  by  British  financial  interests),  may  be  looked  to  for  anti- 
alcohol  legislation.  Mohammedanism  has  always  been  a 
bitter  enemy  of  strong  drink.  It  is  the  peoples  of  Western 
Europe  who  will  resist  longest  the  crusade  against  alcohol. 
The  average  Frenchman  and  Italian  can  scarcely  conceive 
of  life  without  their  wine;  the  average  Britisher  clings  tena- 


THE  ALCOHOL  PROBLEM  207 

ciously  to  his  beer  and  ale.  The  average  amount  of  alcohol 
consumed  per  capita  in  Great  Britain  is  half  as  much  again 
as  it  ever  was  in  this  country.  In  Italy  it  is  between  two  and 
three  times  as  much.  In  France,  where  the  alcoholic  con- 
sumption is  highest,  it  is  more  than  three  times  as  much. 
The  figures  for  the  pre-war  Germany  were  not  much  higher 
than  for  the  United  States. 

The  arguments  against  prohibition  are  not  strong.  That 
the  law  is  poorly  enforced  in  localities  where  public  senti- 
ment is  against  it  is  natural;  but  no  law  is  universally  obeyed, 
and  that  a  law  is  broken  is  a  poor  reason  for  removing  it 
from  the  statute  books.  No  one  would  suggest  repealing 
the  laws  against  burglary  or  seduction  because  they  are  daily 
disobeyed.  This  pseudo-concern  for  the  dignity  of  the  law  is 
simply  a  specious  argument  advanced  by  those  who  have 
an  interest  in  the  trade,  and  accepted  by  those  who  suppose 
liquor-drinking  to  be  wrong  only  in  excess  and  harmless  in 
moderation.  The  reply  is  to  show  that  alcohol,  even  in  small 
doses,  is  harmful;  a  practice  that  is  always  harmful  must  be 
fought  by  the  law  as  well  as  by  moral  suasion.  Public  senti- 
ment must  be  educated  up  to  the  law;  and  the  existence  of 
the  law  is  itself  of  educative  value.  Moreover,  the  problem 
of  enforcement  has  become  relatively  easy  with  nation-wide 
prohibition,  and  will  be  still  easier  when  neighboring  na- 
tions are  also  '*dry." 

That  prohibition  involves  the  ruin  of  a  great  industry  is 
true;  these  millions  of  workers  are  now  free  to  give  their 
strength  to  productive  labor,  these  millions  of  dollars  have 
now  been  invested  in  industries  useful  to  mankind.  Confis- 
cation works  hardship  to  the  brewers  and  distillers;  so  it 
does  to  the  opium-growers,  the  makers  of  indecent  pictures, 
and  counterfeit  money.  A  trade  so  inimical  to  the  general 
interest  deserves  no  mercy.  The  States  that  unwisely  used 
the  '* tainted  money"  drawn  from  the  industry  by  license 


208  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

have  now  a  far  richer  community  to  tax  in  other  ways;  for 
every  dollar  got  in  liquor-license  fees,  many  dollars  have 
been  lost  to  the  State.  As  Gladstone  said,  "Give  me  a  sober 
population,  not  wasting  their  earnings  in  strong  drink,  and 
I  shall  know  where  to  obtain  the  revenue." 

The  only  other  point  to  be  noted  is  that  the  saloon  —  the 
"public  house,"  the  "poor  man's  salon  "  —  must  be  replaced 
by  other  social  centers,  that  give  opportunities  for  recrea- 
tion, cheer,  and  social  intercourse.  The  question  of  substi- 
tutes for  the  saloon  will  be  alluded  to  again,  in  chapter  xxx.^ 

The  world-wide  campaign  against  alcohol  is  on,  the 
area  of  its  legalized  sale  is  steadily  diminishing.  We  who 
now  discuss  it  may  live  to  see  it  swept  off  the  face  of  the 
earth;  if  not  we,  our  children  or  children's  children.  And  we 
must  see  to  it  that  no  other  drug  —  opium,  morphine,  or  the 
like  —  gets  a  similar  grip  on  humanity.  Our  descendants 
will  look  with  as  great  horror  upon  the  alcohol  indulgence 
of  our  times  as  most  of  us  now  do  upon  opium-smoking. 
"O  God,  that  men  should  put  an  enemy  into  their  mouths 
to  steal  away  their  brains!  that  we  should,  with  joy,  pleas- 
ance,  revel,  and  applause,  transform  ourselves  into  beasts!" 

The  best  book  for  practical  use  is  H.  S.  Warner's  Social  Welfare 
and  the  Liquor  Problem  (revised  edition,  1913),  where  extensive 
references  to  the  authorities  will  be  found.  Two  other  excellent 
popular  books  are  H.  S.  Williams,  Alcohol  (1909),  and  Horsley  and 
Sturge,  Alcohol  and  the  Human  Body  (1911).  See  also  Rosanoff,  in 
McClure's  Magazine,  vol.  32,  p.  557;  Rountree  and  Sherwell,  The 
Temperance  Problem  and  Social  Reform;  T.  N.  Kelynack,  The 
Drink  Problem;  Scientific  Conclusions  concerning  the  Alcohol 
Problem  (Senate  Document  48,  61st  Congress,  1909);  and  the  five 
volumes  of  conclusions  of  the  Committee  of  Fifty,  published  by 
Houghton  MifHin  Co.,  under  the  general  title,  Aspects  of  the  Liquor 
Problem ;  a  summary  of  these  conclusions  is  published  with  the 
title  The  Liquor  Problem,  ed,  F.  J.  Pcabody.   Barker,  The  Saloon 

^  See  Raymond  Calkins,  Substitutes  for  the  Saloon.  H.  S.  Warner,  op.  cit., 
chap.  VIII.  Forum,  vol.  21,  p.  595. 


THE  ALCOHOL  PROBLEM  209 

Problem  and  Social  Reform.  Fanshawe,  Liquor  Legidatinn  in  the 
United  States  and  Canada.  C.  R.  Henderson,  The  Social  Spirit  in 
America,  chap.  xvi.  John  Burns,  Labor  and  Drink.  J.  H.  Crooker, 
Shall  I  Drink?  A.  F.  Felilandt,  A  Century  of  Drink  Reform.  D. 
B.  Armstrong,  The  Sociological  Aspects  of  the  Alcohol  Problem.  The 
Year-Books  of  the  Anti-Saloon  League.  Chas.  Stelzle,  Why  Prohi- 
bition? 

The  best  available  data,  to  date,  on  the  physiological  questions 
underlying  the  moral  questions  may  be  found  in  G.  Rosenfeld, 
Der  Einfluss  des  Alkohols  aufden  Organismus  (1901) ;  A.  R.  Cushney, 
The  Action  cf  Alcohol  (1907)  —  paper  read  before  the  British  Asso- 
ciation; Meyer  and  Gottlieb,  Pharmacology  (1914).  In  its  particu- 
lar field,  R.  Dodge  and  F.  G.  Benedict,  The  PsycJiological  Effects 
of  Alcohol  (1915),  supersedes  the  earlier  experimental  studies. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

MARRIAGE  AND  DIVORCE 

Temperance  in  the  indulgence  of  the  appetites  is  a  man- 
ifest necessity  for  health  and  efficiency  —  temperance  in 
work  and  play,  in  eating  and  drinking,  in  novel  reading  and 
theater  going,  in  whatever  activity  desire  may  suggest.  But 
two  appetites  stand  on  a  different  footing  from  the  others, 
and  demand  more  than  temperance.  The  love  of  alcohol 
and  the  other  narcotics,  being,  as  we  have  seen,  a  patho- 
logical and  highly  dangerous  appetite,  productive  of  scarcely 
any  real  good,  must  be  rooted  out  of  human  nature,  as  it 
readily  can  be,  to  the  great  advantage  of  mankind.  The 
other  great  appetite,  that  of  sex,  cannot  be  treated  so  cava- 
lierly :  to  eradicate  it  or  deny  its  fulfillment  would  be  to  put 
a  speedy  end  to  the  human  race.  The  solution  of  the  prob- 
lems of  sex  is  therefore  not  so  simple.  On  the  one  hand,  we 
have  to  recognize  the  instinct  as  normal  and  necessary;  on 
the  other  hand,  we  are  confronted  by  the  incalculable  evils 
which  it  produces,  and  forced  to  admit  the  necessity  of  some 
strictly  repressive  code.  Out  of  lust  come  the  saddest  trage- 
dies —  disease  and  suffering,  unwished  childbirth,  heart- 
break and  death.  Desire  sings  a  siren  music  in  our  ears;  b\it 
the  bones  of  those  who  have  surrendered  to  the  song  lie 
bleaching  on  the  rocks.  There  is  no  heavier  sight  than  to 
see  happy,  heedless  youth  caught  by  the  lure  of  this  strange, 
mysterious  thrill  and  drifting  to  their  destruction  — 

"As  a  bird  hasteth  to  the  snare. 
And  knoweth  not  that  it  is  for  his  life." 

So  much  is  at  stake  here  that  we  must  be  more  than 
ordinarily  sure  that  we  are  not  biased,  that  we  are  not  bind- 


MARRIAGE  AND  DWORCE  211 

ing  ourselves  by  needless  restrictions.  But  after  whatever 
doubts  and  wanderings,  the  man  of  mature  experience  comes 
back  to  the  monogam.ous  ideal  with  the  conviction  that  in 
it  lies  not  only  our  salvation  but  our  truest  happiness.  Noth- 
ing, then,  in  the  whole  field  of  ethics  is  more  important  than 
for  each  generation,  as  it  stands  on  the  threshold  of  tempta- 
tion and  opportunity,  to  see  clearly  the  basic  reasons  for  this 
code.  A  reverence  for  authority,  a  deep-implanted  senti- 
ment, a  recurrent  emotional  appeal,  and  a  barrier  of  scruples 
and  pledges  may  keep  many  within  the  lines  of  safety.  But 
the  morality  of  sentiment  and  authority  must  always  be 
based  on  a  morality  of  reason  and  experience.  We  must 
therefore  begin  by  recapitulating  the  fundamental  reasons 
for  our  monogamous  ideal. 

What  are  the  reasons  for  the  ideal  of  monogamy? 

(1)  The  most  glaring  danger  for  a  man  in  unchastity  is 
disease.  The  venereal  diseases  are  among  the  most  terrible 
known  to  man;  they  are  highly  contagious  and  at  present 
only  very  partially  curable.  Practically  all  prostitutes  be- 
come infected  before  long;  the  chance  of  indulging  in  promis- 
cuous intimacies  without  catching  some  form  of  infection 
is  slight.  The  only  sure  way  of  escape  from  this  immi- 
nent danger  is  by  the  exclusive  love  of  one  man  and  one 
woman.  Moreover,  these  diseases  are,  in  their  effects,  trans- 
missible from  husband  to  wife  and  from  wife  to  children. 
Many  women's  diseases,  a  large  part  of  their  sterility,  of 
miscarriages  and  infant  deaths,  a  large  proportion  of  the 
paralysis,  insanity,  and  blindness  in  the  w^orld,  are  due  to 
the  sins  of  a  husband  or  parent.  Thus  the  penalty  for  a 
single  misstep  may  be  very  grim;  and  the  worst  of  it  is  that 
it  must  often  be  shared  by  the  innocent.^ 

^  See  Prince  Morrow,  Social  Diseases  and  Marriage.  W.  L.  Ho-n  ard. 
Plain  Facts  on  Sex  Uygiene. 


212  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

(2)  For  a  girl  the  danger  of  disease  is  not  all.  There  is 
the  additional  danger  of  pregnancy,  which  means,  and  must 
mean,  for  her  not  only  pain  and  risk  of  life,  but  lasting  shame 
and  disgrace.  Even  paid  prostitutes,  who  are  willing  to  em- 
ploy dangerous  methods  to  prevent  conception,  and  soon 
become  nearly  sterile  through  disease  or  overindulgence, 
often  have  to  resort  to  illegal  operations,  at  the  risk  of  their 
lives,  and  not  infrequently  come  to  childbirth.  The  hitherto 
moral  girl  who  makes  a  single  misstep  is  much  more  likely 
to  conceive. 

(3)  The  most  obvious  reason  why  society  cannot  afford 
to  be  lenient  with  illegitimacy  is  that  there  is  no  proper  pro- 
vision for  rearing  children  born  out  of  wedlock.  The  woman 
and  the  child  usually  need  the  financial  support  of  the  man; 
they  always  need  his  love  and  care.  If  the  man  marries  the 
girl  he  has  wronged,  there  is  not  only  the  disgrace  still  at- 
taching to  her  (and  rightly  to  him,  still  more),  but  the  fact 
of  a  hasty  and  unintended  and  probably  more  or  less  un- 
happy marriage.  Certainly  in  every  such  case  the  girl  has  a 
right  to  demand  that  the  man  shall  marry  her;  whether  or 
no  she  will  wish  him  to,  or  will  prefer  to  bear  her  burden  and 
disgrace  alone,  is  for  her  to  determine.  But  this  is  sure  — 
that  any  man  who  takes  the  chance  of  ruining  a  foolish  and 
ignorant  or  oversusceptible  girl  —  '*and  all  for  a  bit  of 
pleasure,  as,  if  he  had  a  man's  heart  in  him,  he  'd  ha*  cut  his 
hand  off  sooner  than  he  'd  ha'  taken  it "  *  —  ought  to  be 
despised  and  socially  ostracized  by  his  fellows.  Except  for 
the  penalty  of  disease,  women  have  always  borne  the  brunt 
of  sexual  follies,  though  men  have  been  the  more  to  blame. 
It  is  high  time  that  this  injustice  were  remedied  to  such  ex- 
tent as  law  and  public  opinion  can  do  it. 

(4)  The  employment  of  paid  prostitutes  for  man's  gratifi- 

*  George  Eliot's  Adam  Bede,  from  which  these  words  are  taken,  ought 
to  be  read  by  every  boy  and  girl. 


MARRIAGE  AND  DIVORCE  «18 

cation  keeps  in  existence  the  unhappiest  and  most  degraded 
class  in  the  world.  Brutalized  and  worn  by  their  abijormal 
life,  treated  with  coarse  indignities  which  they  cannot  re- 
sent, deprived  of  their  birthright  of  genuine  love,  of  wife- 
hood and  motherhood,  stricken  with  disease  and  doomed  to 
an  early  death,  thousands  of  girls  who  ought  to  be  bearing 
healthy  children  and  rearing  the  future  citizens  of  the  State, 
now  walk  the  streets  painted  and  gaudily  bedecked,  seek- 
ing their  miserable  livelihood,  and  snaring  the  heedless  and 
restless  youth  of  the  cities,  the  "young  men  void  of  under- 
standing," to  their  common  degradation.  This  human 
wastage  is  worse  upon  the  race  than  war;  and  all  the  more 
pathetic  because  it  consists  of  girls  scarcely  past  the  thres- 
hold of  their  maidenhood.  \Yhen  we  consider  further  the 
indescribably  horrible  cruelty  of  the  "white-slave  trade," 
which  the  insatiable  lust  of  men  has  brought  into  being, 
we  may  begin  to  realize  to  what  the  absence  of  restraint  upon 
this  appetite  has  led. 

It  is  quite  conceivable  that  within  the  near  future  the 
venereal  diseases  will  be  rendered  entirely  curable  by  the 
progress  of  medicine.  It  is  possible  that  some  certain  and 
harmless  method  of  preventing  conception  w^ll  be  found 
and  become  so  universally  known  that  the  danger  of  unin- 
tentional childbirth  will  become  practically  non-existent. 
Such  a  situation  would  remove  the  most  obvious  reasons  for 
chastity,  and  would  insure  a  rapid  growth  of  free-love  senti- 
ment. We  must  then  go  on  with  the  argument  and  point 
out  that  even  where  these  terrible  results  are  escaped,  the 
way  of  free  love  is  not  the  happiest  way. 

(5)  Freedom  from  restraint  in  inter-sex  relations  inevit- 
ably leads,  in  the  majority  of  men  and  women,  to  an  over- 
indulgence which  seriously  impairs  health  and  efficiency. 
The  one  salient  motive  for  the  opposition  of  ancient  codes  to 


214  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

sex  license  was  the  necessity  of  preserving  the  virility  of  the 
young  men  for  war.  To-day  athletes  are  enjoined  to  chas- 
tity. But,  indeed,  if  a  man  would  succeed  in  anything,  he 
must  check  this  so  easily  overdeveloped  impulse.  Promis- 
cuity means  a  continually  renewed  stimulus;  the  passion, 
which  quickly  becomes  normal  and  intermittent  when  it 
spends  itself  upon  one  object,  is  apt  to  become  an  abnormal 
and  almost  continuous  craving  when  it  is  solicited  by  a  suc- 
cession of  novel  and  piquant  attractions.  The  advocates 
of  free  love  assert  that  it  is  unnatural  repression  that  creates 
an  undue  and  morbid  longing;  that  freedom  to  satisfy  the 
instinct  would  tend  to  keep  it  in  its  properly  subordinate 
place.  But  the  contrary  is,  in  reality,  true.  More  usually, 
as  Rabelais  has  it,  "the  appetite  comes  during  the  eating." 
The  absence  of  temptation  will  leave  an  instinct  dormant 
which  free  opportunity  to  indulge  will  develop  into  a  domi- 
nant appetite.  And  nothing  more  quickly  drafts  strength 
or  ambition  than  absorption  in  sex  pleasures;  we  need  to  put 
our  energies  into  something  that  instead  of  being  inimical  is 
forwarding  to  the  rest  of  our  interests. 

(6)  Sexual  intemperance  coarsens,  blunts  delight  in  the 
less  violent  and  more  delicate  emotions.  The  pleasures  of 
sex,  though  of  the  keenest,  are  not  lasting,  like  those  of  the 
intellect,  of  religion,  art,  and  manly  achievement.  But  if 
recklessly  indulged  in,  they  inevitably  sap  our  interest  in 
these  other  ideals.  Except  where  they  spring  from  and 
reinforce  true  affection,  they  are  an  opiate,  taking  us  into 
a  dream  world  that  makes  actual  life  stale  and  tasteless. 
"Hold  off  from  sensuality,"  says  Cicero;  "for  if  you  give 
yourself  up  to  it,  you  will  be  unable  to  think  of  anything 
else."  There  is  so  much  else  that  is  worth  while,  life  has  so 
many  possible  values,  that  for  our  own  final  happiness,  we 
cannot  afford  to  let  this  instinct  usurp  too  great  a  place. 
The  vision  of  God  is  worth  many  hours  of  transient  and 


MARRIAGE  AND  DIVORCE  216 

shallow  excitement;  and  that  vision  comes  only  to  the  pure 
in  heart. 

(7)  But  even  for  the  greatest  pleasure  in  sex  itstilf,  incon^ 
tinence  is  a  blunder.  The  plea  for  it  comes  usually  from  the 
inexperienced;  it  is  the  yearning  of  youth  toward  the  lure 
of  the  untried  ways.  Actually,  where  passion  is  unbridled, 
the  halo  and  the  vision  quickly  vanish;  the  sated  impulse 
becomes  a  restless  craving  for  more  violent  stimulation,  a 
thirst  that  no  mere  physical  intimacy  can  ever  assuage;  or 
it  leaves  the  heart  cloyed  and  despondent  and  resourceless. 
This  is  the  natural  history  of  undisciplined  passion;  it 
cheapens  love,  it  robs  it  quickly  of  its  exquisiteness  and 
charm.  The  faithful  lover,  on  the  other  hand,  by  checking 
premature  intimacies,  and  keeping  true  to  the  one  woman 
who  calls  or  will  some  day  call  out  all  his  love,  knows  a 
steady  joy  that  bulks  in  the  end  far  greater  than  the  flaring 
and  fitful  and  quickly  disillusioned  passions  of  unearned 
love.  ^\Tiere  the  veil  of  mystery  is  not  too  rudely  dra's^Ti 
aside,  the  ability  to  respond  to  the  charm  of  girlhood  and  of 
ripe  womanhood  may  be  long  retained;  the  pleasures  of  sex 
that  count  for  most  in  the  end  are  not  the  moments  of  pas- 
sion, but  the  daily  enjoyment  of  companionship  with  the 
opposite  sex,  the  assurance  and  ccmfort  of  mutual  fidelity, 
the  love  that  feeds  on  daily  caresses,  endearing  words,  and 
acts  of  tender  service.  And  these  lasting  joys  do  not  accrue 
to  the  man  or  woman  who  is  not  willing  to  wait,  or  who 
squanders  his  potentialities  of  love  in  reckless  and  funda- 
mentally unsatisfying  debauchery.  This  is  the  paradox  of 
love;  whoso  would  find  its  best  gifts  must  be  willing  to  deny 
himself  its  gaudiest.  The  old  love  of  twos,  the  loyalty  of 
man  and  wife  that  bring  to  each  other  pure  hearts  and 
bodies,  is  best. 

(8)  There  are,  besides,  certain  practical  consequences  of 
which  experience  warns.  Free  lo^^e  would  mean  jealousies. 


216  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

deserted  lovers,  and  broken  hearts.  Free  love  is  especially 
hard  on  a  woman ;  she  readily  becomes  attached,  and  craves 
loyalty.  Inconstancy,  though  it  is  so  natural  to  man  as 
often  to  need  the  pressure  of  law  and  convention  for  its 
repression,  is  not  only  the  worst  enemy  of  his  own  happi- 
ness, but  the  inevitable  source  of  friction  and  clash  between 
men  and  between  women.  If  freedom  to  break  the  troth 
that  love  instinctively  plights  is  allowed,  the  chances  are 
numerous  that  one  or  the  other  will  some  day  discover 
another  "aflBnity"  that,  at  least  for  the  time,  seems  closer 
and  better  suited  to  him;  unless  a  stern  loyalty  prevents, 
one  or  two  or  three  hearts  may  be  broken.  Our  monogamous 
code  —  w  hose  biological  value  is  clearly  indicated  by  its 
adoption  by  most  of  the  higher  animals  (not  counting  the 
domesticated  animals,  whose  morals  have  been  hopelessly 
ruined)  —  stands  among  the  wisest  of  our  ideals. 

What  safeguards  of  monogamy  are  necessary  ? 

Overwhelming  as  is  the  argument  for  monogamy,  it  runs 
counter,  in  many  people,  to  such  violent  impulses  that  it 
needs  every  prop  and  sanction  that  can  be  given  it.  It  must 
shelter  itself  under  the  law,  keep  on  its  side  the  conscience  of 
men,  and  be  hallowed  by  alliance  with  religion. 

(1)  The  social-religious  institution  of  marriage  must  be 
kept  as  sacred  and  serious  as  possible  in  the  general  esti- 
mation. The  wedding  ceremony  itself,  adding  as  it  does  dig- 
nity and  symbolism,  the  memory  of  a  beautiful  occasion,  and 
the  witness  of  friends  to  the  plighting  of  mutual  vows,  is  of 
appreciable  value.  The  marriage  laws  should  require  some 
delay,  with  perhaps  a  publication  of  intention  to  marry  in 
advance  of  the  time  of  marriage.  The  presentation  of  a 
certificate  of  health  from  both  parties,  signed  by  a  duly 
licensed  physician,  might  well  be  demanded.  Anything  that 
can  prevent  over-hasty  and  ill-considered  marriages  de- 


MARRIAGE  AND  DIVORCE  217 

serves  consideration,  though  there  is  danger  in  the  other  ex- 
treme, in  making  the  entrance  into  matrimony  too  difficult. 

(2)  During  the  years  prior  to  marriage  the  community 
must  exercise  a  certain  degree  of  pressure  in  the  interest  of 
conventionahty  of  conduct.  The  conventions  that  restrict 
freedom  in  the  friendships  of  boys  and  girls  for  one  another 
may  easily  be  pushed  too  far,  provoking  resentment  and 
stimulating  the  very  intimacies  they  are  designed  to  avert. 
But  Hues  must  be  drawn,  a  certain  amount  of  tactful  chap- 
eronage  is  necessary,  and  the  youths  must  be  encouraged  to 
develop  a  sense  of  chivalrous  loyalty  to  the  abstinences  and 
the  decorum  that  are  a  necessary  complement  of  their  happy 
comradeship.  It  is  well  to  have  many  barriers  that  must  be 
broken  before  any  gross  temptation  can  arise.  Moreover, 
too  great  freedom  of  companionship  may  lead  to  too  much 
idling  together,  drawing  attention  away  from  the  studies 
and  spor  s  that  ought  to  make  up  the  bulk  of  the  activity 
of  youth. 

(3)  On  the  other  hand,  the  wholesome  comradeship  of 
boys  and  girls  must  be  encouraged,  both  for  the  removal  of 
that  loneliness  and  curiosity  which  often  lead  to  evil,  and 
in  order  that  husband  and  wife  may  be  wisely  chosen.  Nor- 
mal friendships  w^ith  girls  are  of  the  greatest  value  to  young 
men.  They  must  not  only  avoid  evil,  but  overcome  evil 
with  good.  Ulysses  escaped  the  sirens  by  having  himself 
bound  to  a  mast;  but  Orpheus  escaped  by  playing  a  sweeter 
music  still  than  they.  The  passionate  youth  must  speak  in 
the  vein  of  the  Knight  of  Santayana's  poem: 

"As  tlie  gaudy  shadows 
Stalked  by  me  which  men  take  for  beauteous  thmgs, 
I  laughed  to  scorn  each  feeble  counterfeit, 
And  cried  to  the  sweet  image  in  my  soul. 
How  much  more  bright  thou  wast  and  beautiful." 

(4)  Further,  normal  interests  of  all  sorts  must  be  en- 
couraged; the  man  or  woman  who  has  a  full,  all-round  life. 


218  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

who  cultivates  wholesome  intellectual,  aesthetic,  religious 
activities,  is  in  far  less  danger  of  an  unregulated  passion. 
Human  energy  must  find  some  happy  outlets,  or  it  will  tend 
to  run  amuck;  what  we  become  depends  largely  on  what 
we  get  interested  in.  In  particular,  the  abundant  physical 
activity  of  robust  health  makes  it  much  easier  to  banish 
immoderate  desires. 

(5)  Another  duty  of  the  community  lies  in  the  fight 
against  the  public  sources  of  sensual  appeal  —  not  merely  the 
commercialization  of  vice  itself,  but  the  indecent  shows  and 
books  through  which  the  greed  of  money  panders  to  sensu- 
ality. The  line  to  draw  is,  of  course,  very  difficult;  what  is 
dangerous  for  one  reader  or  spectator  is  harmless  to  another. 
We  do  not  want  a  prudish  censorship  of  our  theaters  and 
our  literature.  Moreover,  there  is  a  real  conflict  here,  at 
times,  between  beauty  and  morality;  and  it  is  difficult  to 
know  which  to  sacrifice.  How  can  we  enjoy  beauty,  feel 
powerful  emotion,  and  not  be  wrecked  by  it;  how  can  we 
make  life  rich  and  yet  keep  it  pure?  This  perplexing  ques- 
tion will  recur  when  we  come  to  discuss  the  relation  of  art  to 
morality. 

(6)  Education  on  matters  of  sex  must  probably  be  at- 
tended to  in  the  public  schools.  It  were  better  done  by 
parents,  perhaps;  but  parents  cannot  be  depended  upon  to 
do  it.  The  dangers  that  await  indulgence,  the  cruelty  and 
brutality  of  prostitution,  should  be  universally  but  cau- 
tiously taught;  too  many  boys  and  girls  wreck  their  Hves 
for  lack  of  such  knowledge.  It  is  indeed  a  delicate  task  to 
instruct  adolescents  in  these  matters;  there  is,  as  Professor 
Munsterberg  has  well  pointed  out,  a  grave  danger  of  stimu- 
lating, by  calling  attention  to  it,  the  very  impulse  which  it 
is  desired  to  curb,  of  dissipating  the  fear  of  the  unknown 
—  which  may  be  greater  than  that  of  clearly  understood, 
and  thereby,  perhaps,  avoidable  dangers,  and  of  breaking 


MARRIAGE  AND  DIVORCE  219 

down  barriers  of  shyness  and  reticence,  which  form  one  of 
the  most  effective  of  safeguards.  Personal  attention  to  the 
individual  needs  of  boys  and  girls  of  widely  differing  tem- 
peraments and  mental  condition  is  imperative.  But  in 
general,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  almost  every  boy  and 
girl  learns,  somehoy\%  long  before  marriage,  the  main  facts 
concerning  sex-relations.  And  it  is  far  better  that  that  knowl- 
edge should  be  imparted  reverently,  accurately,  unemotion- 
ally, and  with  due  emphasis  upon  perils  and  penalties,  than 
that  it  should  be  gained  in  coarse  and  exciting  ways,  or 
remain  half  understood  and  with  a  glamour  of  mystery 
about  it. 

The  economic  situation  that  threatens  the  stability  of  our 
monogamous  ideal  deserves  special  consideration.  Women 
are,  in  increasing  numbers,  seeking  careers  outside  the  heme. 
The  result  is  that  the  marriage-rate  is  to  some  degree  falling 
off,  while  women  who  marry  and  continue  to  carry  on  their 
outside  vocations  are  apt  to  have  few,  if  any,  children,  and 
to  take  marriage  and  child-bearing  more  as  an  incident,  less 
as  the  consummation  and  chief  interest  in  their  lives.  Is 
this  tendency  desirable? 

(1)  Woman's  traditional  sphere  is  the  home;  Kirche, 
Kinder^  und  Kuche,  in  the  words  with  which  the  late  Kaiser 
summed  up  the  whole  duty  of  woman.  Many  thoughtful 
observers  believe  that  any  other  vocation  is  incompatible 
with  her  duty  to  her  husband.  It  is  obvious  that  if  both 
husband  and  wife  have  "careers,"  they  may  find  them- 
selves pulled  in  different  directions;  the  husband,  a  college 
professor,  say,  may  receive  an  alluring  call  to  another  State, 
while  the  wife,  a  physician,  will  find  her  practice,  built  up 
through  years  of  service,  ruined  if  she  moves  with  him.  Or 
it  may  be  the  wife  whose  calling  offers  some  opening  in  a  dis- 
tant locality.  In  such  cases,  one  or  the  other  must  make  the 


220  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

vocation  secondary,  and  loyalty  to  the  mate  the  primary 
consideration.  And  even  when  such  a  situation  does  not 
arise,  the  woman  whose  outside  career  takes  many  hours  a 
day  cannot  attend  to  the  household  duties  which  the  aver- 
age man  expects  his  wife  to  perform. 

(2)  More  serious  still  is  the  effect  of  woman's  work  upon 
her  children.  Supposing  that  she  dees  not  shirk  child- 
bearing,  she  must  let  her  career  suffer  during  the  months 
before  and  after  the  birth  of  her  children.  Statistics  show 
the  grave  dangers  of  injury  to  the  health  of  children  through 
the  overwork  of  their  mothers  during  this  period.  And  even 
after  the  earliest  infancy  of  the  children,  their  proper  rear- 
ing demands  the  most  exacting  attention.  The  earnings 
from  the  outside  vocation  may  suffice  to  pay  for  nurse  or  gov- 
erness —  if  a  trustworthy  and  competent  person  is  avail- 
able; but  there  are  many  who  feel  that  a  hired  helper  cannot 
properly  take  the  place  of  the  mother.  It  is  true  that  many 
mothers  themselves  are  incompetent  for  child-rearing;  a 
mother  may  have  less  instinctive  love  of  that  task  and  skill 
at  it  than  an  outsider  whom  she  could  engage  for  the  pur- 
pose. But  certain  it  is  that  a  woman  who  has  children  must 
let  them  be  the  first  lien  upon  her  time  and  interest,  seeing 
to  it  that,  whatever  happens,  they  do  not  suffer. 

(3)  On  the  other  hand,  the  taking-up  of  vocations  by 
women  who  would  otherwise  be  idlers  —  parasites,  wasters, 
drones,  they  are  called  by  the  opponents  of  the  traditional 
limitations  upon  woman's  activities  —  is  a  great  economic 
gain  to  the  community.  If  a  woman  has  competent  helpers 
to  do  her  home-work,  she  ought  to  be  doing  something  else 
herself  to  justify  her  existence.  The  economic  independ- 
ence thus  gained  is  of  great  value  to  her,  making  her  secure 
against  her  husband's  failure,  illness,  or  death,  and  m.aking 
her  marriage-relation  less  one  of  dependence  than  of  equal 
comradeship.   Childbirth  and  child-rearing  take  only  a  few 


MARRIAGE  AND  DIVORCE  221 

years,  after  all,  out  of  the  average  woman's  life;  and  even  if 
she  attends  to  her  children  entirely  herself,  her  earlier  and 
later  years  are  free  for  other  service  to  society. 

(4)  An  outside  vocation  may  add  much  experience  and 
wisdom  to  a  woman,  as  to  a  man,  and  fit  her  thereby  to  be 
a  better  companion  to  her  husband  and  educator  of  her 
children.  There  is  a  certain  shut-in-ness  and  monotony 
about  house-work  as  a  life-career;  the  enriching  of  a  woman's 
life  by  outside  contacts  and  activities  is  much  to  be  desired. 

(5)  The  ability  to  earn  her  living  for  herself  frees  an  un- 
married woman  from  the  pressure  that  otherwise  may  drive 
her  into  marriage  as  a  means  of  support.  The  self-support- 
ing woman  is  in  a  position  to  decide  more  cautiously,  and  to 
marry  only  for  love. 

Whether  the  wholesome  influence  upon  marriage  of  this 
greater  independence  and  richer  experience  of  women  out- 
weighs, on  the  whole,  the  dangers  of  childlessness,  of  children 
and  homes  neglected,  of  women  and  children  impaired  in 
health,  is  a  question  perhaps  impossible  to  solve.  The  only 
conclusion  we  can  reach  is  that  it  is  an  individual  problem, 
which  should  be  carefully  considered  in  all  its  aspects  by 
every  young  woman,  in  the  light  not  only  of  her  own  happi- 
ness, but  of  her  best  usefulness  to  others. 

What  are  the  factors  in  an  ideal  marriage  ? 

Celibacy  is  neither  natural  nor  desirable;  a  happy  mar- 
riage should  be  the  goal  of  every  healthy  man's  and  woman's 
thought.  The  economic  situation  that  prevents  so  many 
from  marrying  till  nearly  or  quite  thirty  is  thoroughly  un- 
wholesome and  must  in  some  way  be  remedied.  Marriage 
in  the  early  twenties  is  not  only  for  many  a  wise  safeguard 
of  monogamy,  it  is  physiologically  better  for  the  woman 
and  her  offspring.  The  danger  and  pain  in  childbirth  to  a 
woman  of  twenty  or  twenty-five  are  less  than  in  later  life. 


222  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

and  the  children  have  a  better  chance  of  health.  Moreover, 
young  people  are  mentally  and  morally  more  plastic;  they 
have  not  yet  become  so  '*set"  in  their  ways  as  they  will 
later  become,  and  are  more  likely  to  grow  together  and  make 
easily  those  little  compromises  and  adjustments  which  the 
fusing  of  two  lives  necessitates.  And  it  is  alw^ays  a  pity  that 
the  two  who  are  to  be  life  comrades  should  fail  to  have  these 
years,  in  some  ways  the  best  of  their  lives,  together. 

Yet  this  sacred  and  exacting  relationship  must  not  be 
hastily  entered,  for  nothing  more  surely  than  marriage  makes 
or  mars  character  and  happiness.  Too  early  marriage  is  apt 
to  be  impulsive  and  thoughtless.  It  is  true  that  many  con- 
firmed bachelors  and  maiden  ladies  lose  through  an  excess 
of  timidity  the  great  experiences  and  joys  which  a  little 
boldness,  a  little  willingness  to  take  a  risk  and  put  up  with 
the  imperfect  would  have  brought  them.  No  man  or  woman 
is  perfect;  no  one  can  expect  to  find  a  wholly  ideal  mate; 
it  is  foolish  to  be  too  exacting,  and  it  is  conceited,  implying 
that  one  is  flawless  one's  self.  Nevertheless,  the  counsel  of 
caution  is  more  commonly  needed.  Happily  we  have  pretty 
generally  got  away  from  manages  de  convenance,  marriages 
for  money,  or  title,  or  other  extraneous  advantages.  And 
we  have  recognized  the  right  of  the  two  who  are  primarily 
concerned  to  make  their  own  choice  without  interference, 
other  than  friendly  counsel  and  warning,  from  others.  But 
w^e  still  have  many  marriages  from  which  the  basic  desiderata 
are  in  too  great  degree  absent. 

(1)  There  should  be  genuine  love;  not  necessarily,  of 
course,  a  violent  passion,  or  love  at  first  sight,  but  some 
measure  of  that  instinctive  organic  attraction,  that  unpre- 
dictable and  irrational  emotional  satisfaction  in  physical 
proximity,  which  differentiates  love  from  the  friendship  of 
men  or  women  for  one  another.  Not  that  "platonic"  re- 
lations between  husband  and  wife  are  not  possible  or  per- 


MARRIAGE  AND  DIVORCE  223 

missihle;  but  if  a  young  couple  are  not  linked  by  this  sweet- 
est of  bonds,  they  not  only  miss  much  of  the  charm  and 
mutual  drawing-together  of  marriage,  but  they  stand  in 
gravest  danger  of  an  eventual  arousing  of  the  instinct  by 
another  —  and  that  means  either  a  bitter  fight  for  loyalty 
or  actual  tragedy.  It  is  never  to  be  forgotten  that  husband 
and  wife  have  to  spend  a  great  part  of  their  life  in  the  same 
house,  in  the  same  room.  No  degree  of  similarity  of  interests 
can  take  the  place  of  that  mere  instinctive  liking,  that  per- 
vasive content  at  each  other's  presence,  that  enjoyment  in 
seeing  each  other  about,  and  in  the  daily  caresses  and  en- 
dearing words  that  rightly  mated  couples  know. 

(2)  But  this  underlying  physical  attraction,  however  keen 
at  first,  is  not  of  guaranteed  permanence;,  it  must  be  but- 
tressed by  common  tastes  and  sympathies.  To  fike  the  same 
people,  to  enjoy  doing  the  same  things,  to  judge  problems 
from  the  same  angle,  to  cleave  to  similar  moral,  aesthetic, 
religious  canons  is  of  great  importance.  A  certain  amount  of 
contrast  in  ideas  and  ideals  is,  indeed,  piquant  and  stimu- 
lating; and  where  marriage  is  early  there  is  likelihood  of  an 
adequate  convergence  in  Weltanschauung.  But  too  radically 
different  an  outlook  upon  life  may  lead  to  continual  friction, 
to  loneliness,  and  mutual  antagonism.  The  two  who  are 
to  be  comrades  in  the  great  experiment  of  life  mast  be  able 
to  help  each  other,  strengthen  each  other's  weaknesses,  and 
admire  each  other's  aims  and  achievements.  In  particular, 
religious  fanaticism  is  an  intractable  enemy  of  marital  happi- 
ness. As  Stevenson  puts  it,  "There  are  differences  which  no 
habit  nor  affection  can  reconcile,  and  the  Bohemian  must 
not  intermarry  with  the  Pharisee.  .  .  .  The  best  of  men 
and  the  best  of  women  may  sometimes  live  together  all  their 
lives,  and,  for  want  of  some  consent  on  fundamental  ques- 
tions, hold  each  other  lost  spirits  to  the  end." 

(3)  It  scarcely  needs  to  be  added  that  there  must  be  on 


«24  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

both  sides  a  iiigh  standard  of  morality.  Truthfulness,  sin- 
cerity,  self-control,  the  willingness  to  work,  to  sacrifice 
personal  desires  and  pull  together  for  the  common  welfare 
of  the  home,  are  essential,  as  well  as  fidelity  to  marriage 
vows  and  abstinence  from  all  intemperance  and  law  breaking. 
Common  tastes  can  be  formed  after  marriage;  even  the 
organic  attraction  is  pretty  sure  to  be  awakened  in  some 
degree  if  the  pair  are  not  actually  repulsive  to  each  other; 
but  low  moral  ideals  at  the  age  of  marriage  are  seldom  rad- 
ically transformed  afterward  and  render  any  happiness  in 
home-making  insecure. 

(4)  Perhaps  some  day  it  may  become  incumbent  upon  the 
suitor  to  weigh  the  matter  of  the  heredity  back  of  the  lady 
of  his  choice,  and  consider  whether  she  is  best  adapted,  by 
mating  with  him,  to  give  birth  to  normal  and  healthy  chil- 
dren ;  or  for  the  maiden  sought  to  regard  with  equal  care  the 
antecedents  of  the  suitor.  But  —  fortunately  for  lovers' 
consciences  —  we  know  too  little  at  present  about  heredity 
and  the  breeding  of  human  beings  to  give  much  useful  advice 
or  make  any  demands  of  the  prospective  couple,  except  to 
insist  that  those  who  are  tainted  with  hereditary  disease  or 
feeble-mindedness  shall  refrain  from  marriage.  To  this 
subject  we  shall  recur  in  chapter  xxx. 

Is  divorce  morally  justifiable  ? 

If  marriage  were  always  undertaken  with  adequate  cau» 
tion,  there  would  seldom  be  need  of  annulling  it.  But  sinc( 
mistakes  are  bound  to  be  made  and  unhappy  unions  result; 
since,  further,  matters  arising  after  marriage  often  tend  to 
push  couples  apart  and  engender  a  state  of  friction  or  ab- 
solute antagonism,  a  necessary  postscript  to  the  questions 
concerning  marriage  must  be  that  concerning  divorce.  It  is 
matter  of  common  knowledge  that  there  is  a  marked  tend- 
ency in  recent  years  toward  a  loosening  of  the  marriage 


MARRIAGE  AND  DIVORCE  225 

bond;  the  ease  with  which  divorces  arc  granted  in  some 
States  seems  to  conservatives  a  scandal.  Among  the  causes 
for  this  are  the  lessening  of  allegiance  to  religious  authority, 
the  loss  of  the  older  fears  and  restraints,  the  growing  spirit 
of  adventure  and  iconoclasm.  With  the  breaking-up  of  tradi- 
tions, the  lure  of  freedom  has  been  strong,  especially  upon 
the  so-long-dominated  and  docile  sex.  Women  are  becoming 
better  educated  and  asserting  their  rights  everywhere;  they 
are  now  able  to  earn  their  living  in  many  independent  ways, 
and  are  in  a  position  to  break  loose;  the  era  of  the  subjection 
of  women  is  over,  and  it  is  natural  that  many,  particularly 
of  the  idle  and  frivolous,  should  turn  this  new-won  liberty 
into  license. 

But,  indeed,  human  nature  being  as  it  is,  there  would  in- 
evitably arise,  and  have  always  arisen,  many  cases  of  strain 
and  friction  in  marriage  relations.  As  Chesterton  says,  a 
man  and  a  woman  are,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  incompati- 
ble; and  that  underlying  incommensurability  of  viewpoint 
easily  results  in  clash  where  a  deep-rooted  aSection  and  a 
habit  of  self-control  are  absent.  Innumerable  couples  have 
suffered  and  hated  each  other  and  made  the  best  of  it ;  nowa- 
days they  are  deeming  it  better  frankly  to  admit  and  end 
the  discord.  And  the  problem,  Which  solution  is  better?  is 
by  no  means  an  easy  one.  We  can  but  make  here  a  few 
general  suggestions. 

(1)  Divorce  must  certainly  not  be  so  easy  as  to  encourage 
hasty  and  unconsidered  marriage,  or  to  turn  this  most  sacred 
of  relationships  into  a  mere  experimental  and  provisional 
alliance.  "Trial  marriage"  is  a  palpably  reprehensible 
scheme,  involving  an  unwarrantable  stimulus  to  the  sex 
appetite;  many  men  would  enjoy  taking  one  woman  after 
another,  until  their  passion  in  each  case  had  exhausted  its 
force  with  the  lapse  of  novelty;  women,  who  are  not  so 
naturally  promiscuous,  would  suffer  most.    What  would 


226  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

become  of  the  children  is  a  question  whose  very  posing  con- 
demns the  proposal.  But  too  lax  a  divorce  law  practically 
permits  trial  marriage;  one  or  the  other  p^arty  may  enter  into 
the  contract  and  pronounce  the  solemn  vows  without  any 
intention  of  keeping  them  when  it  shall  cease  to  be  for  his 
or  her  pleasure.  Not  in  this  way  is  to  be  got  the  real  worth 
of  marriage;  the  conscious  and  earnest  effort,  at  least,  must 
be  to  keep  to  it  for  life.  An  easy  short  cut  to  freedom  would 
tempt  too  many  from  the  harder  but  nobler  way  of  compro- 
mise, conciliation,  and  self -subordination.  If  one  is  weak  and 
erring,  or  petulant  and  unkind,  the  other  must  patiently  and 
lovingly  seek  to  help,  to  educate,  to  uplift;  seventy  times 
seven  times  is  not  too  often  for  forgiveness;  and  many  a 
marriage  that  seemed  hopelessly  wrecked  has  been  saved 
by  magnanimity  and  tactful  affection.  There  is  a  fine  dis- 
ciplinary value  in  these  forbearances,  and  much  opportunity 
for  spiritual  growth  in  the  persevering  endeavor  toward 
harmony  and  mutual  understanding.  Many  a  man  and 
woman  who  might  have  been  lost  if  divorced,  has  been 
saved  for  a  better  life  by  the  unwiUingness  of  wife  or  hus- 
band to  desert  imder  grievous  provocation.  There  comes  an 
ebb  to  most  conjugal  disputes;  men  and  women  grow  wiser, 
and  often  gentler,  with  age;  while  there  is  any  hope  for  re- 
adjustment and  revival  of  love  it  is  wrong  to  break  marital 
vows.  Many  a  divorce  has  been  as  hasty  and  ill-considered 
as  the  marriage  it  ended,  and  has  left  the  couple  in  the  end 
less  happy  and  useful  members  of  the  community.  Partic- 
ularly when  there  are  children  should  the  parents  sacrifice 
much  for  the  sake  of  giving  them  a  real  home,  with  both 
mother-  and  father-love. 

(2)  Yet  there  are  cases  where  love  is  hopelessly  killed  and 
harmony  is  impossible;  cases  where  much  suffering,  and  even 
moral  degeneration,  would  result  from  continuance  of  the 
married  life.  Where  a  man  transfers  his  love  to  another  or 


MARRIAGE  AND  DIVORCE  227 

indulges  in  infidelity  to  his  vows;  where  he  crazes  himself 
with  liquor  or  some  other  narcotic,  and  will  not  give  it 
up;  where  he  treats  his  wife  with  cruelty  or  contempt,  or 
through  selfishness  or  laziness  deserts  or  refuses  to  support 
her;  where  she  refuses  to  perform  her  wifely  duties,  gives 
herself  to  other  men,  makes  home  intolerable  for  him  —  in 
short,  in  any  case  where  mutual  loyalty  and  cooperation  are 
hopeless  of  attainment,  it  is  surely  best  that  there  should  be 
separation.  It  does  not  make  for  the  welfare  of  the  children, 
or  for  the  sanctity  of  marriage,  that  such  wretched  traves- 
ties of  it  should  continue.  Moreover,  for  eugenic  reasons, 
we  must  urge  the  freeing  of  wives  from  husbands  who  have 
transmissible  diseases,  inheritable  defects,  or  addiction  to 
drugs.  Nor  should  the  fact  of  one  mistake  preclude  the 
injured  party  from  another  opportunity  for  happiness  and 
usefulness.  Whether  the  guilty  man  or  woman,  the  one 
wholly  or  chiefly  to  blame  for  the  failure,  should  be  per- 
mitted to  remarry  is  another  matter;  but  probably,  on  the 
whole,  it  is  better  than  the  alternative  encouragement  of 
immorality  and  illegitimacy. 

(3)  The  community  should  exert  its  influence  toward  the 
remedying  of  the  present  anomalies  and  uncertainties  by 
making  both  marriage  laws  and  divorce  laws  as  nearly 
uniform  as  possible  throughout  the  country.  The  divorce 
law  should  avoid  pandering  to  caprices  and  impulse  by  re- 
quiring a  period  to  elapse  between  statem^ent  of  desire  for 
divorce  and  its  granting.  For  ordinary  cases  a  delay  of  a 
year  when  both  parties  desire  the  divorce,  and  of  two 
years  when  only  one  party  desires  it,  seems  wise,  not  as  a 
penalty  for  a  past  mistake,  but  to  discourage  fickleness,  to 
put  a  brake  upon  rash  marriages  and  rash  annulments. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  should  be  possible  for  any  man  or 
woman  to  find  deliverance  from  an  intolerable  and  appar- 
ently irremediable  situation  without  expense,  publicity,  or 


228  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

any  imputation  of  scandal.  Divorce  is  always  a  sad  matter, 
but  it  is  on  occasion  as  necessary  as  a  surgical  operation,  and 
should  be  essentially  a  private  arrangement.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  any  moral  end  is  served  by  requiring  "grounds"  for 
divorce  to  be  shown  —  as,  proofs  of  infidelity,  cruelty,  or  the 
like;  most  of  these  alleged  reasons  for  divorce  at  present  are 
false  or  exaggerated  pretexts  oflPered  to  satisfy  the  law.  The 
fundamental  ground  for  most  divorces  is  that  the  couple 
have  found  that  they  cannot  be  happy,  cannot  be  their  best 
selves,  together.  There  are  many  kinds  of  cruelty  as  dis- 
astrous to  love  as  sexual  dereliction  or  physical  blows,  many 
faults  of  temper  or  selfishness  as  hard  to  bear.  After  all,  it 
is  not  the  cause  that  matters,  it  is  the  effect;  if  one  of  the 
parties  is  made  persistently  and  hopelessly  unhappy  by  the 
union,  relief,  after  an  appropriate  delay,  should  be  granted. 
This  is  not  to  say  that  in  all  such  cases  the  husband  or  wife 
should  seek  relief;  often  it  is  nobler,  as  we  have  said,  to  en- 
dure rather  than  to  escape.  But  it  is  essentially  a  personal 
matter,  with  which  the  States  should  interfere  as  little  as 
possible.  Of  course  the  children,  if  any,  must  be  safe- 
guarded by  the  law,  as  to  care  and  support. 

Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics,  chap.  xxvi.  R.  C.  Cabot,  What  Men 
Live  By,  chaps,  xxiv-xxrx.  W.  L.  Sheldon,  An  Ethical  Movement, 
chaps.  XI,  XII.  Felix  Adler,  Marriage  and  Divorce,  The  Spiritual 
Meaning  of  Marriage.  B.  P.  Bowne,  Principles  of  Ethics,  pt.  iii, 
chaps.  VIII,  IX.  W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  The  Map  of  Life,  chap.  xiv.  R.  L. 
Stevenson,  Virginibus  Puerisque,  J.  Riis,  The  Peril  and  Preservation 
of  the  Home.  H.  G.  Wells,  "Divorce"  (in  Socio/  Forces  in  England 
and  America),  What  is  Coming,  vm.  C.  J.  Hawkins,  Will  the 
Home  Survive  ?  H.  Spencer,  Principles  of  Ethics,  pt.  m,  chaps,  viii, 
IX.  E.  S.  P.  Haynes,  Divorce  as  It  Might  Be.  R.  West,  The  World's 
Worst  Failure.  W.  L.  George,  The  Intelligence  of  Women,  chaps. 
v-vn.  Bcrtrand  Russell,  IF%  J/e7i  Fi<7/i^  chap.  VI.  Kavelock  Ellis, 
The  Task  of  Social  Hygiene,  iv.   Ellen  Key,  Love  and  Marriage. 

For  the  data  see  United  States  Department  of  Commerce  and 
Labor,  Reports  on  Marriage  and  Divorce, 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

FELLOWSHIP,  LOYALTY,  AND  LUXURY 

Every  man  has  to  solve  the  problem  of  how  far  he  will 
live  for  his  smaller,  personal  seK,  and  how  far  for  that  larger 
self  that  includes  the  interests  of  others.  The  general  princi- 
ples involved  we  have  discussed  in  chapter  xi;  we  may 
now  proceed  to  consider  their  application  to  the  concrete 
situations  in  which  we  find  ourselves. 

What  social  relationships  impose  claims  upon  us? 

(1)  The  relations  of  husband  and  wife  and  of  parenthood 
are  most  sacred  and  exacting,  because  they  are  voluntarily 
assumed,  and  because  the  need  and  possibilities  of  help  are 
here  greatest.  A  man  or  woman  may  without  odium  remain 
free  from  these  obligations;  but  once  they  have  made  the 
vows  that  initiate  the  dual  life,  once  they  have  brought  a 
helpless  child  into  the  world,  neither  may  evade  the  conse- 
quent responsibilities.  If  undertaken  at  all,  these  duties 
must  be  conscientiously  fulfilled;  and  whatever  sacrifices 
are  necessary  must,  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  ungrudgingly, 
be  made. 

(2)  Next  in  in\aolability  to  these  claims  are  those  of 
father  and  mother,  brother  and  sister,  and  other  near  rela- 
tives. Involuntary'-  as  these  relations  are».  the  natural  piety 
that  accepts  the  burdens  they  entail  must  not  be  allowed  to 
grow  dim.  Those  nearest  of  kin  are  the  natural  supports  and 
helpers  of  the  weak  and  dependent;  and  though  patience 
and  resources  be  severely  taxed,  it  is  better  to  let  blood  ties 
continue  to  involve  obhgation  than  to  permit  the  selfish 


230  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

irresponsibility  of  a  freer  and  more  individualistic  society. 
Much  provocation  can  be  borne  by  remembering  "She  is 
my  mother";  "He  is  my  brother";  after  all,  their  interests 
are  ours,  and  our  lives  are  impoverished,  as  well  as  theirs, 
if  we  ignore  them. 

(3)  The  voluntary  bonds  of  friendship  entail  somewhat 
vaguer  obligations,  since  the  closeness  of  the  tie  is  not  clearly 
fixed,  as  it  is  in  the  case  of  blood  relationship.  But  "once 
a  friend  always  a  friend"  is  the  true-hearted  man's  motto. 
"Assure  thee,"  says  one  of  Shakespeare's  heroines,  "if  I  do 
vow  a  friendship,  I'll  perform  it  to  the  last  article."  No 
one  who  has  won  another's  friendship,  and,  however  tacitly, 
pledged  his  own,  is  thenceforth  free  to  ignore  the  bond.  Here 
are  for  most  men  the  happiest  opportunities  for  fellowship, 
for  inward  growth,  and  for  service;  for  if  the  love  of  wife 
surpasses  that  of  friends,  it  is  not  only  on  account  of  the 
fascination  of  sex,  but  because  marriage  may  be  the 
supreme  friendship.  Emerson  declared  that  "every  man 
passes  his  life  in  the  search  after  friendship";  and  the  great- 
est of  Stevenson's  three  desiderata  for  happiness  was  — 
"Ach,  Du  lieber  Gott,  friends!"  Human  beings,  even  when 
brought  up  in  a  similar  environment,  are  so  infinitely  diver- 
gent in  temperament  and  ideal,  that  the  near  of  kin  seldom 
meet  a  man's  deepest  needs,  and  he  must  wait  and  watch  to 
find  one  here  and  there  with  whom  he  can  clasp  hands  in 
real  mutual  comprehension  and  accord.  Want  of  this  spon- 
taneous comradeship  sadly  limits  a  life;  nothing  pays  more 
in  joy  than  the  circle  of  friends  that  a  man  can  draw  about 
him. 

Nothing,  likewise,  is  more  morally  stimulating.  "What  a 
friend  thinks  me  to  be,  that  must  I  be."  This  linking  of  our 
lives  to  others  draws  us  out  of  ourselves,  corrects  our 
cramped  and  distorted  vision,  and  reinforces  our  wavering 
aspirations.  Hence  those  who  are  so  critical  and  fastidious 


FELLOWSHIP,  LOYALTY,  AND  LLT^LTIY  231 

as  to  make  few  friends  ill  serve  their  owti  interests.  A  certain 
heartiness  and  fearlessness  of  trust  is  necessary;  reproaches 
and  suspicions,  accusations  and  demands  for  explanations, 
must  not  be  indulged  in,  even  if  wrong  is  actually  done.  A 
presumption  of  good  intentions  must  always  be  maintained, 
even  if  appearances  are  black.  It  is  more  shameful,  as  La 
Rochefoucauld  said,  to  distrust  a  friend  than  to  be  deceived 
by  him.  Indeed,  these  deceptions  and  disillusions  are  often- 
est  the  result  of  our  o^\ti  mistaken  idealization;  we  must 
expect  neither  perfection  nor  those  particular  virtues  in 
which  we  ourselves  are  especially  punctilious,  and  under- 
take to  love  and  cleave  to  a  mortal,  not  an  angel.  Friendship 
requires  not  only  that  we  lend  a  hand  when  help  is  needed; 
it  implies  patience  and  tact  and  the  endeavor  to  understand. 
Through  common  experiences,  repeated  interchange  of 
thought  and  observation,  mutual  enjoyment  of  beauty  and 
fun,  particularly  in  expressing  common  ideals  and  working 
together  for  common  causes,  there  grows  to  maturity  this 
wonderful  relationship  —  "the  slowest  fruit  in  the  whole 
garden  of  God,  which  many  summers  and  many  winters 
must  ripen." 

(4)  Beyond  the  boundaries  of  blood  and  friendship  he  a 
whole  hierarchy  of  lesser  relationships  —  to  neighbors,  to 
employees,  to  fellow  townsmen,  to  human  beings  the  world 
over.  Mere  proximity  constitutes  a  claim  that  is  not  com- 
monly acknowledged  when  distance  interposes;  most  men 
would  be  mortally  ashamed  to  let  a  next-door  neighbor 
starve,  although  they  may  feel  no  call  to  lessen  their  luxu- 
ries when  thousands,  whom  they  could  as  easily  succor,  are 
perishing  in  the  antipodes.  And  there  is  a  measure  of  neces- 
sity in  this;  to  burden  our  minds  with  the  thought  of  the 
suffering  in  India,  in  Russia,  in  Japan,  leads  to  a  paralyzing 
sense  of  impotence.  If  we  confine  our  thought  to  the  dwellers 
on  our  street  or  in  our  town,  it  may  not  seem  utterly  hope- 


232  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

less  to  try  to  remedy  their  distress;  to  improve  the  situation 
of  the  laborers  in  one's  own  shop  or  factory  Hes  within  the 
limits  of  practicability.  But  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the 
universal  brotherhood  of  man  is  becoming  a  working  prin- 
ciple at  last;  and  millions  of  dollars  and  thousands  of  our 
ablest  young  men  and  women  are  crossing  the  oceans  to 
uplift  and  civilize  the  more  backward  nations,  in  deference 
to  the  admonition  that  we  are  our  brothers'  keepers.  At 
home  this  recognition  of  the  basic  human  relationship  of 
living  together  on  this  httle  sphere,  that  is  plunging  with  us 
all  through  the  great  deeps  of  space,  should  help  to  obliterate 
class  lines  and  snobbishness  and  bring  about  a  real  democracy 
of  fellowship. 

(5)  Finally,  we  have  a  duty  to  those  dumb  brothers  of 
ours,  the  animal  species  that  share  with  us  the  earth.  For 
they,  too,  feel  pain  and  pleasure,  and  are  much  at  our  mercy. 
We  must  learn  — 

"Never  to  blend  our  pleasure  or  our  pride 
With  sorrow  of  the  meanest  thing  that  feels." 

All  needless  hurting  of  sentient  creatures  is  cruelty,  whether 
of  the  boy  who  tortures  frogs  and  flies,  or  of  the  grown  man 
who  takes  his  pleasure  in  hunting  to  death  a  frightened  deer. 
Beasts  of  prey  must,  indeed,  be  ruthlessly  put  to  death,  just 
as  we  execute  murderers;  among  them  are  to  be  counted 
flies,  mosquitoes,  rats,  and  the  other  pests  so  deadly  to  the 
human  race  and  to  other  animals.  But  death  should  be 
inflicted  as  painlessly  as  possible;  no  humane  man  will  pro- 
long the  suffering  of  the  humblest  creature  for  the  sake  of 
"sport"  or  take  pleasure  in  the  killing.  We  must  say  with 
Cowper  — 

"  I  would  not  enter  on  my  list  of  friends, 
(Though  graced  with  polished  manners  and  fine  sense. 
Yet  wanting  sensibility)  the  man 
Who  needlessly  sets  foot  upon  a  worm." 


FELLOWSHIP,  LOYALTY,  AND  LUXURY  233 

This  does  not  necessarily  imply  that  we  may  not  rear  and 
kill  animals  for  food.  When  properly  slaughtered,  they 
suffer  inappreciably  —  no  more,  and  probably  less,  than 
they  would  otherwise  suffer  before  death;  the  fear  of  the 
hunted  animal  is  not  present,  and  there  is  no  danger  of  leav- 
ing mate  and  offspring  to  suffer.  Indeed,  the  animals  that 
are  bred  for  food  would  not  have  their  chance  to  live  at  all 
but  for  serving  that  end;  and  their  existence  is  ordinarily, 
without  doubt,  of  some  positive  balance  of  worth  to  them. 
Certainly  the  rearing  of  cattle  and  sheep  and  chickens  adds 
appreciably  to  the  picturesqueness  and  richness  of  human 
life;  and  if  dieticians  are  to  be  believed,  their  food  value 
could  hardly  be  replaced  by  substitutes. 

The  question  of  vivisection  is  not  a  difficult  one.  Certainly 
experimentation  on  living  animals  should  be  sharply  con- 
trolled, anaesthetics  should  be  used  whenever  possible,  and 
the  needless  repetition  of  operations  for  illustrative  purposes 
should  be  forbidden.  But  it  is  far  better  for  the  general 
good  that  necessary  experimentation  should  be  performed 
upon  animals  than  upon  human  beings;  not  at  all  as  a 
partisan  judgment,  to  shift  suffering  from  ourselves  to 
others,  which  would  be  unjustifiable,  but  because  animals 
are  less  sensitive  to  pain,  and  unable  to  foresee  and  fear  it  as 
human  beings  would.  The  human  lives  saved  have  been  of 
far  greater  worth  —  not  only  to  themselves  but  objectively 
—  than  the  animal  lives  sacrificed.  Moreover,  except  for 
a  few  glaring  instances,  vivisection  has  involved  little 
cruelty;  and  the  crusade  against  it,  though  actuated  by  a 
noble  impulse,  has  rested  upon  misrepresentation  of  facts 
and  exaggeration  of  evils. 

What  general  duties  do  we  owe  our  fellows? 

(1)  The  abstract  duty  to  refrain  from  hurting  our  fellows, 
«,nd  to  give  positive  help  to  whomever  we  can,  will  find  con- 


284  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

stant  application  in  connection  with  each  specific  problem 
we  are  to  study.  But  a  few  general  remarks  may  be  perti- 
nently made  here.  In  the  first  place,  we  need  to  be  reminded 
that  to  help  requires  insight  and  tact  and  ingenuity;  it  is  not 
enough  to  respond  to  obvious  needs  or  actual  requests;  we 
must  learn  to  understand  our  fellows*  wants,  remember  their 
tastes,  seek  out  ways  to  add  to  their  happiness  or  lighten 
their  burdens.  For  another  thing,  we  must  realize  the 
importance  of  manners,  and  cultivate  kindliness  of  voice 
and  phrase,  courtesy,  cheerfulness,  and  good  humor.  Surli- 
ness and  ill- temper,  glumness,  touchiness,  are  inexcusable; 
nor  may  we  needlessly  burden  others  with  our  troubles  and 
disappointments  —  the  motto,  "Burn  your  own  smoke," 
voices  an  important  duty.  Again,  we  must  remember  that 
people  generally  are  lonely  and  in  need  of  love;  we  must  be 
generous  in  our  affection.  It  is  sometimes  said  that  love 
given  as  a  duty  is  a  mockery;  and  doubtless  spontaneous 
and  irresistible  love  is  best.  But  it  is  possible  to  cultivate 
love.  If  we  think  of  others  not  as  rivals  or  enemies,  but  as 
fellows  whose  interests  we  ourselves  have  at  heart,  if  we  try 
to  put  ourselves  in  their  place,  see  through  their  eyes,  and 
enjoy  their  pleasures  and  successes,  we  shall  find  ourselves 
coming  to  want  happiness  for  them  and  then  feeling  some 
measure  of  affection.  Men  and  women  do  not  have  to  be 
perfect  to  be  loved;  all  or  nearly  all  are  loveworthy,  if  we 
have  it  in  us  to  love. 

(2)  The  question  how  far  we  should  tolerate  what  we 
believe  to  be  wrong  in  others,  and  how  far  we  should  work  to 
reform  them,  is  of  the  most  difficult.  Certainly  moral  evil 
must  be  fought;  the  counsel  to  "resist  not  evil"  cannot  be 
taken  too  sweepingly.  No  one  can  sit  still  while  a  big  boy 
is  bullying  a  smaller,  while  vice  caterers  are  plying  their 
trades,  while  cruelly  and  injustice  of  any  sort  are  being 
perpetrated.  In  lesser  matters,  too,  we  must  not  be  inactive, 


FELLOWSHIP,  LOYALTY,  AND  LUXURY  235 

but  use  our  influence  and  persuasion  to  call  our  fellows  to 
better  things.  They  may  well  at  some  later  day  reproach  us 
if  we  shirk  our  duty  to  help  them  see  and  correct  their  faults; 
still  more  may  we  be  reproached  by  others  who  have  been 
harmed  by  faults  that  we  might  have  done  something 
toward  curing.  Often  a  single  gentle  and  tactful  admonition 
has  turned  the  whole  current  of  a  man's  life.  The  truest 
friendship  is  not  too  easy-going;  it  stimulates  and  checks  as 
well  as  comforts.  Emerson  happily  phrases  this  aspect  of  the 
matter:  "I  hate,  when  I  looked  for  a  manly  furtherance,  or 
at  least  a  manly  resistance,  to  find  a  mush  of  concession. 
Better  be  a  nettle  in  the  side  of  your  friend  than  his  echo.'* 
This  is,  however,  only  half  the  truth.  What  Stevenson 
calls  the  "passion  of  interference  with  others"  is  one  of  the 
wretchedest  poisoners  of  human  happiness.  People  are, 
after  all,  hopelessly  at  variance  in  ideals,  and  we  must  be 
content  to  let  others  live  in  their  own  way  and  according  to 
their  own  inner  hght,  as  we  live  by  ours.  Probably  neither 
is  the  light  of  perfect  day.  Parents  are  particularly  at  fault 
in  this  respect;  rare  is  the  father  or  mother  who  is  willing 
that  son  and  daughter  should  leave  the  parental  paths  and 
follow  their  own  ideals.  Incalculable  is  the  amount  of  need- 
less suffering  caused  by  the  conscientious  attempt  to  make 
others  over  into  our  own  image.  As  Carlyle  wrote,  "The 
friendliest  voice  must  speak  from  without;  and  a  man's 
ultimate  monition  comes  only  from  within."  We  need  not 
only  a  shrugging  "tolerance,"  but  a  willingness  to  admit  that 
these  who  differ  from  us  may  after  all  be  in  the  right  of  it. 
It  often  happens  that  as  we  live  our  standards  change,  and 
we  come  to  see  that  those  whom  we  were  anxious  to  reform 
were  less  in  need  of  reformation  than  we;  and  very  likely 
while  we  were  blaming  others,  they  in  their  hearts  were 
blaming  us..  The  older  we  grow  the  less  we  feel  ourselves 
qualified  for  the  office  of  censor. 


236  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

Certain  practical  counsels  may  perhaps  be  not  too  imperti- 
nent: Be  sure  you  can  take  advice  yourself  without  offense 
or  irritation  before  you  proffer  it  to  others;  there  may  be 
beams  in  your  own  eyes  as  well  as  motes  in  your  neighbors'. 
Be  sure  you  see  through  the  other's  eyes,  and  get  his  point 
of  view;  only  so  can  you  feel  reasonably  confident  that  you 
are  right  in  your  advice  or  reproof.^  Be  sure  that  you  are 
saying  what  you  are  saying  for  the  other's  good,  and  not  to 
give  vent  to  your  own  irritability  or  selfishness  or  sense  of 
superiority;  say  what  must  be  said  sweetly  or  gravely,  never 
patronizingly  or  sharply,  with  resentfulness  or  petulance. 
Be  sure  you  choose  your  occasion  tactfully,  and  above  all 
things  do  not  nag;  it  is  better  to  have  it  out  once  and  for  all 
than  to  be  forever  hinting  and  complaining  and  reproving. 
Praise  when  you  can,  temper  advice  with  compliments, 
make  it  apparent  that  your  spirit  is  friendly  and  your  mood 
good-tempered.  Talk  and  think  as  little  as  possible  of  others* 
faults;  he  who  is  above  doing  a  low  act  is  above  talking  about 
another's  failings.  The  only  right  gossip  is  that  which  dwells 
upon  the  pleasant  side  of  our  neighbors'  doings.  Avoid  all 
impatience,  contempt,  and  anger;  they  poison  no  one  so 
much  as  him  who  feels  them.  Cultivate  kindliness  and  sym- 
pathy; love  opens  blind  eyes,  helps  us  to  understand  our 
neighbor,  and  to  help  him  in  the  best  way. 

Are  the  rich  justified  in  living  in  luxury? 

Of  all  the  problems  that  loyalty  to  our  fellows  involves, 
none  is  acuter,  to  the  conscientious  man,  than  that  concern- 
ing the  degree  of  luxury  he  may  allow  himself.   It  is  strictly 

^  Cf.  W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  The  Map  of  Life,  p.  68:  "Few  men  have  enough 
imagination  to  realize  types  of  excellence  altogether  differing  from  their 
own.  It  is  this,  much  more  than  vanity,  that  leads  them  to  esteem  the  types 
of  excellence  to  which  they  themselves  approximate  as  the  best,  and  tastes 
and  habits  that  are  altogether  incongruous  with  their  own  a&  futile  and 
«ontemptible." 


FELLOWSHIP,  LOYALTY,  AND  LUXURY  237 

true  that  the  quantity  of  good  things  in  the  world  is  Kmited; 
the  more  I  have,  the  less  others  have.  How  can  a  good  man 
be  content  to  spend  unnecessary  sums  upon  himself  and  his 
own  family,  when  within  arm's  reach  men  and  women  and 
children  are  being  stunted  mentally  and  morally,  are  hving 
in  dirt  and  squalor,  are  succumbing  to  disease,  are  actually 
dying,  for  lack  of  the  comfort  and  opportunity  that  his 
superfluous  wealth  could  give?  "Wherever  we  may  live,  if 
we  draw  a  circle  around  us  of  a  hundred  thousand  [sic],  or  a 
thousand,  or  even  of  ten  miles'  circumference,  and  look  at 
the  lives  of  those  men  and  women  who  are  inside  our  circle, 
we  shall  find  half-starved  children,  old  people,  pregnant 
women,  sick  and  weak  persons,  all  working  beyond  their 
strength,  with  neither  food  nor  rest  enough  to  support  them, 
and  so  dying  before  their  time."  ^  It  is  only  a  lack  of  imagi- 
nation and  sympathy,  or  an  actual  ignorance  of  conditions, 
that  can  permit  so  many  really  kind-hearted  people  to  spend 
so  much  money  upon  clothes,  amusements,  elaborate  din- 
ners, and  a  lot  of  other  superfluities,  in  a  world  so  full  of 
desperate  need. 

It  would  be  well  if  every  citizen  could  be  compelled  to  do 
a  little  charity- visiting,  or  something  of  the  sort,  that  he 
might  see  with  his  own  eyes  the  cramping  and  demoralizing 
conditions  under  which,  for  sheer  lack  of  money,  so  many 
worthy  poor,  under  the  present  crude  social  organization, 
must  live.  It  is  the  segregation  of  the  well-to-do  in  their 
separate  quarters  that  fosters  their  shameless  callousness, 
and  leads,  in  the  rich,  "to  that  flagrant  exhibition  of  great 
wealth  which  almost  frightens  those  who  know  the  destitu- 
tion of  the  poor." 

There  is,  however,  a  growing  uneasiness  among  those  who 
have,  an  increasing  sense  of  responsibility  toward  those  who 
have  not;  there  are  hopeful  signs  of  a  return  to  the  sane  ideal 
1  Tolstoy,  What  ShaU  We  Do  Then?  chap.  xxvi. 


238  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

of  the  Greeks,  who  deemed  it  vulgar  and  barbaric  to  spend 
money  lavishly  on  self.  The  compunctions  of  the  rich  are 
indicated,  on  the  one  hand,  by  generous  donations  made  to 
all  sorts  of  causes,  and  on  the  other  hand,  by  the  arguments 
which  are  now  thought  necessary  to  justify  the  selfish  use  of 
money.  These  arguments  we  may  cursorily  discuss. 

(1)  A  clever  writer  in  a  recent  magazine^  speaks  of  "fac- 
titious altruism";  with  this  "altruism  of  the  Procrusteans " 
—  who  would  reduce  every  one  to  the  simple  life  —  she  has 
"little  patience."  "Thousands  of  people  seem  to  be  infected 
with  the  idea  that  by  doing  more  themselves  they  bestow 
leisure  on  others;  that  by  wearing  shabby  clothes  they  some- 
how make  it  possible  for  others  to  dress  better  —  though 
they  thus  admit  tacitly  that  leisure  and  elegance  are  not 
evil  things.  Or  perhaps  —  though  Heaven  forbid  they 
should  be  right !  —  they  merely  think  that  by  refusing 
nightingales'  tongues  they  make  every  one  more  content 
with  porridge.  Let  us  be  gallant  about  the  porridge  that 
we  must  eat;  but  let  us  never  forget  that  there  are  better 
things  to  eat  than  porridge." 

This  philosophy,  less  gracefully  expressed,  is  not  uncom- 
mon. Luxury  isy  other  things  equal,  better  than  simplicity 
But  other  thmgs  are  not  equal  when  our  neighbors  are  cold 
and  sick  and  hungry.  What  self-respecting  man  can  eat 
"caviare  on  principle"  when  another  has  not  even  bread.? 
By  wearing  plainer  clothes  we  can  make  it  possible  for  others 
to  dress  better,  by  denying  ourselves  nightingales'  tongues 
we  can  buy  porridge  for  the  poor.  It  surely  betokens  a  low 
moral  stage  of  civilization  that  so  many,  nevertheless, 
choose  the  Paquin  gowns  and  the  six-course  dinners. 

Luxury  is  better  than  simplicity  if  it  can  be  the  luxury  of 
all.  If  not,  it  means  selfishness,  callousness,  and  broken 
bonds  of  brotherhood.    Moreover,  it  has  personal  dangers; 

*  Kathcrine  Fullerton  Gerould,  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  109,  p.  135. 


FELLOWSHIP,  LOYALTY,   AND   LUXURY  239 

it  tends  to  breed  softness  and  laziness,  an  inability  to  endure 
hardship,  what  Agnes  Repplier  calls  "loss  of  nerve."  It 
tends  to  choke  the  soul,  to  crush  it  by  the  weight  of  worldly 
things,  as  Tarpeia  was  crushed  by  the  Sabine  shields. 
"Hardly  can  a  rich  man  enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven.*' 
Simple  living,  with  occasional  luxuries,  far  more  appreciated 
for  their  rarity,  is  healthier  and  safer,  and  in  the  end  per- 
haps as  happy.  Certainly  the  luxury  of  the  upper  classes 
has  usually  portended  the  downfall  of  nations.  "It  is 
luxury  which  upholds  states?"  asks  Laveleye;  "yes,  just 
as  the  executioner  upholds  the  hanged  man." 

"  111  fares  the  land,  to  hastening  ills  a  prey, 
WTiere  wealth  accumulates  and  men  decay." 

(2)  There  is  a  patrician  illusion  prevalent  among  the  rich, 
to  the  effect  that  they  are  more  sensitive  than  the  poor,  have 
higher  natures  which  demand  more  to  satisfy  them;  that 
the  lower  classes  do  not  need  and  would  not  appreciate  the 
luxuries  which  are  necessary  to  their  existence.  To  this  the 
reply  is,  "Go  and  get  acquainted  with  them;  you  will  find 
that  they  are  just  the  same  sort  of  people  that  you  and  your 
friends  are"  —  not  so  educated,  very  likely,  nor  so  refined 
of  speech  and  manner,  but  with  the  same  longings  and 
capacities  for  enjoyment.  Of  course,  they  become  used  to 
discomfort  and  deprivation,  seared  by  suffering;  so  would 
you  in  their  place.  Human  nature  has  a  fortunate  ability  to 
adjust  itself  to  its  environment.  But  even  if  the  poor  do  not 
realize  what  they  are  missing,  that  is  scant  excuse  for  not 
bringing  to  them,  as  we  can,  new  comforts  and  opportunities. 

(3)  The  commonest  fallacy  lies  in  the  argument  that  by 
lavish  consumption  the  rich  provide  employment  for  the 
poor.  They  provide  employment,  yes,  in  serving  them.  They 
create  needless  work,  where  there  is  so  much  work  crying  to 
be  done.  If  that  money  is  put  into  the  bank,  instead,  or  into 
stocks  and  bonds,  it  will  employ  men  and  women  in  really 


240  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

useful  tasks.  If  it  is  given  to  some  of  the  worthy  "causes" 
which  are  always  handicapped  for  lack  of  funds,  it  will 
employ  men  in  caring  for  the  sick,  in  educating  the  ignorant, 
in  feeding  the  hungry,  or  in  bringing  recreation  and  relief 
to  the  worn.  Every  man  or  woman  whose  time  and  strength 
we  buy  for  our  personal  service  —  valet,  maid,  gardener, 
dressmaker,  chef,  or  what  not  —  is  taken  away  from  the 
other  work  of  the  world. 

(4)  A  certain  hopelessness  of  effecting  any  good  often 
paralyzes  good  will.  The  help  a  little  money  can  give  seems 
like  a  drop  in  the  bucket;  its  assistance  is  but  for  a  day,  and 
the  need  remains  as  great  as  ever.  It  may  even  be  worse 
than  wasted;  it  may  encourage  shiftlessness,  it  may  pauper- 
ize. There  is  no  doubt  that  indiscriminate  and  thoughtless 
charity  is  dangerous;  the  crude  largesse  of  a  few  rich  Romans 
of  the  Empire  bred  vast  corruption  and  pauperism.  But 
there  is  much  that  can  safely  be  done;  there  are  many  wise 
and  cautious  agencies  at  work  for  aid  and  uplift;  and  every 
little,  if  given  to  one  of  them,  is  of  real  help. 

(5)  It  is  sometimes  said  that  if  society  discountenances 
luxury,  the  motive  for  hard  and  efficient  work  will  be  too 
much  reduced;  we  need  this  extra  spur  to  exertion.  But  the 
earning  of  what  may  permissibly  be  spent  on  self  is  spur 
enough;  there  is  no  need  of  inordinate  luxury  to  foster 
faithfulness  and  exertion.  The  praise  of  superiors  and  equals, 
a  moderate  rise  in  scale  of  living,  the  shame  of  shirking,  the 
instinctive  glory  in  achievement,  and  the  joy  of  helping 
others,  are  stimuli  enough. 

(6)  Finally,  the  last  argument  of  the  selfish  man  is  that 
**he  has  earned  his  money;  it  is  his;  he  has  a  right  to  do  with 
it  as  he  pleases."  This  we  cannot  admit.  Legally  he  is  as 
yet  free  —  so  backward  is  our  social  order  —  to  accumulate 
and  spend  upon  himself  vast  sums.  But  it  is  not  best  for 
society  that  he  should,  and  so  he  is  not  morally  justified 


FELLOWSHIP.  LOYALTY,  AND  LUXURY  241 

therein.  We  must  agree  with  Carnegie  that  "whatever 
surplus  wealth  comes  to  him  (beyond  his  needs  and  those  of 
his  family)  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  social  trust,  which  he  is 
bound  to  administer  for  the  good  of  his  fellows";  and  with 
Professor  Seager,  that  "the  general  interest  requires  accept- 
ance of  the  maxim:  the  consumption  of  luxuries  should  be 
deferred  until  all  are  provided  with  necessaries." 

This  does  not  mean  that  we  need  live  like  peasants,  as 
Tolstoy  advised,  make  our  own  shoes,  and  till  our  own  plot 
of  ground;  nor  that  we  must  come  down  to  the  level  of  the 
lowest.  By  doing  that  we  should  lose  the  great  advantages 
of  our  material  progress,  which  rests  upon  the  high  speciali- 
zation of  labor  and  reciprocal  service.  We  should  lose  the 
charm  and  picturesqueness  of  highly  differentiated  lives, 
and  sink  into  the  dull,  monotonous  democracy  which 
Matthew  Arnold  so  dreaded.  We  must  work  where  we  can 
best  serve;  we  must  try  to  make  our  lives  and  their  surround- 
ings beautiful,  so  far  as  beauty  does  not  require  too  great 
cost.  We  must  save  up  for  a  rainy  day,  for  insurance  against 
illness  and  old  age,  for  wife  and  children.  We  may  properly 
invest  money,  where  it  will  be  used  to  good  ends  —  so  that 
we  beware  of  spendthrift  or  lazy  heirs.  We  must  keep  up  a 
reasonably  comfortable  and  beautiful  standard  of  living, 
such  a  standard  as  the  majority  could  hope  to  attain  to  by 
hard  work  and  abstinence  and  thrift. 

But  all  the  money  one  can  earn  beyond  this  ought  to  be 
used  for  service.  The  extravagance  and  ostentation  and 
waste  of  many  even  moderately  well-to-do  are  a  blot  upon 
our  civilization.  The  insane  ideal  of  lavish  adornment,  of 
fashionable  clothes  and  costly  furnishings,  of  mere  vain  dis- 
play and  wanton  luxury,  infects  rich  and  poor  alike,  isolating 
the  former  from  the  great  universal  current  of  life,  and  pro- 
voking in  the  latter  bitterness  and  anarchism.  Let  us  ask 
in  every  case.  Does  this  expenditure  bring  use,  health,  joy 


242  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

commensurate  with  the  labor  it  represents?  A  great  deal  of 
current  expense  in  dressing,  in  entertaining,  in  eating,  could 
be  saved  by  a  sensible  economy,  with  no  appreciable  loss  in 
enjoyment.  We  must  not  forget  that  everything  we  con- 
sume has  been  produced  by  the  labor  and  time  of  others. 
What  fortune,  or  our  own  cleverness,  has  put  into  our  hands 
that  we  do  not  need  for  making  fair  and  free  our  own  lives, 
and  the  lives  of  those  dependent  upon  us,  we  should  pass 
on  to  those  whose  need  is  greater  than  ours. 

Is  it  wrong  to  gamble,  bet,  or  speculate? 

A  corollary  to  our  discussion  of  the  duties  appertaining  to 
the  use  of  money  must  be  a  condemnation  of  gambling.  Its 
most  obvious  evil  is  the  danger  of  loss  of  needed  money; 
most  gamblers  cannot  rightly  afford  to  throw  away  what 
ought  to  be  used  for  their  real  needs  and  those  of  their 
families.  Notably  is  this  the  case  with  college  students,  sup- 
ported by  their  parents,  who  heedlessly  waste  the  money 
that  others  have  worked  hard  to  save.  But  even  if  a  man 
be  rich,  he  should  steward  his  wealth  for  purposes  useful 
to  society.  And  he  must  remember  that  if  he  can  afford  to 
lose,  perhaps  his  opponent  cannot. 

Moreover,  if  many  cannot  afford  to  lose,  no  one  can  afford 
to  win.  Insidiously  this  getting  of  unearned  money  pro- 
motes laziness,  and  the  desire  to  acquire  more  money  with- 
out work.  It  makes  against  loving  relations  with  others, 
since  one  always  gains  at  another's  expense.  It  quickly 
becomes  a  morbid  passion,  an  unhealthy  excitement,  which 
absorbs  too  much  energy  and  kills  more  natural  enjoyments. 
The  gambling  mania,  like  any  other  reckless  dissipation, 
easily  leads  to  other  dissipations,  such  as  drinking  and  sex 
indulgence.  These  disastrous  consequences  are,  of  course, 
by  no  means  always  incurred.  But  in  order  that  the  weaker 
may  be  saved  from  them,  it  behooves  the  stronger  to  abstain. 


FELLOWSHIP.  LOYALTY  AND  LUXURY  243 

All  betting,  all  playing  games  for  money,  all  gambling  in 
stocks  is  wrong  in  principle,  liable  to  bring  needless  unhappi- 
ness.  The  honorable  man  will  hate  to  take  money  which  has 
not  been  fairly  earned;  he  will  wish  to  help  protect  those  who 
are  prone  to  run  useless  risks  against  themselves.  The 
safest  place  to  draw  the  line  is  on  the  near  side  of  all  gam- 
bling, however  trivial. 

General  relations  to  others:  F.  Paulsen,  System  of  Ethics,  bk.  in, 
chap,  rx,  sec.  6;  chap,  x,  sees.  3,  4,  5.  G.  Santayana,  Reason  in 
Society.  J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Manual  of  Ethics,  2d  ed.,  chap.  rx. 
Emerson,  Society  and  Solitude  title  essay.  P.  G.  Hamerton,  The 
Intellectual  Life,  pt.  rx. 

Friendship:  Aristotle,  Ethics,  bks.  vm,  rx.  Emerson,  "Friend- 
ship" (in  Essays,  vol.  i).  H.  C.  Trumbull,  Friendship  the  Master 
Passion.  Randolph  Bourne,  in  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  110,  p.  795. 

Luxury:  E.  de  Laveleye,  Luxury.  E.  J.  Urwick,  Luxury  and 
Waste  of  Life.  Tolstoy,  What  SliaU  We  Do  Tlien?  (or.  What  To 
Do  ?)  ]VIaeterlinck,  "Our  Social  Duty"  (in  Measure  of  tJie  Hours). 
F.  Paulsen,  System  of  Ethics,  bk.  m,  chap,  r^,  sees.  3,  4.  T.  W. 
Higginson,  in  Atlantic  Mordldy,  vol.  107,  p.  301.  H.  Sidgwick, 
Practical  Ethics,  chap.  vii.  Hibbert  Journal,  vol.  ii,  p.  39.  H.  R. 
Seager,  Introduction  to  Economics,  chap,  iv,  sees.  43-45.  Th. 
Veblen,  The  Theory  of  tlie  Leisure  Class.  R.  W.  Sellars,  Next  Step 
in  Denwcracy,  chap.  vii.  L.  Stephen,  Social  Rights  and  Duties: 
Luxury.  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  vol.  3,  p.  54;  vol.  5,  p.  1. 

Gambling  and  Speculation :  H.  H.  Brace,  Tlie  Value  of  Organized 
Speculation.  T.  Gibson,  The  Pitfalls  of  Speculation.  C.  A.  Conant, 
Wall  Street  and  the  Country.  Outlook,  vol.  92,  p.  14.  Independent, 
vol.  76,  p.  15. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

TRUTHFULNESS  AND  ITS  PROBLEMS 

Sins  of  untruthfulness  are  not  so  seductive  or,  usually, 
so  serious  as  those  we  have  been  considering;  but  for  that 
reason  they  are  perhaps  more  pervasive  —  we  are  less  on 
our  guard  against  them. 

What  are  the  reasons  for  the  obligation  of  truthfulness? 

Truthfulness  means  trustworthiness.  The  organization  of 
society  could  not  be  maintained  without  mutual  confidence. 
This  general  need  and  the  specific  harm  done  to  the  individ- 
ual lied  to,  if  he  is  thereby  misled,  are  suflBciently  plain.  ^ 
The  evil  resulting  to  the  man  who  lies  is  less  generally 
recognized.   We  may  summarize  it  under  three  heads :  — 

(1)  It  is  much  simpler  and  less  worrisome,  usually,  to  tell 
the  truth.   A  lie  is  apt  to  be  discovered  unless  we  are  con- 

^  I  will  content  myself  with  quoting  one  sentence  from  Mill  (Utilitarian' 
ism,  chap,  ii),  warning  the  reader  to  take  a  deep  breath  before  he  plunges 
in:  "Inasmuch  as  the  cultivation  in  ourselves  of  a  sensitive  feeling  on  the 
subject  of  veracity  is  one  of  the  most  useful,  and  the  enfeeblement  of  that 
feeling  one  of  the  most  hurtful,  things  to  which  our  conduct  can  be  instru- 
mental; and  inasmuch  as  any,  even  unintentional,  deviation  from  truth  does 
that  much  towards  weakening  the  trustworthiness  of  human  assertion, 
which  is  not  only  the  principal  support  of  all  present  social  well-being,  but 
the  insufficiency  of  which  does  more  than  any  one  [other]  thing  that  can 
be  named  to  keep  back  civilization,  virtue,  everything  on  which  human 
happiness  on  the  largest  scale  depends,  —  we  feel  that  the  violation,  for 
a  present  advantage,  of  a  rule  of  such  transcendent  expediency,  is  not 
expedient,  and  that  he  who,  for  the  sake  of  a  convenience  to  himself  or  to 
some  other  individual,  does  what  depends  on  him  to  deprive  mankind  of  the 
good,  and  inflict  upon  them  the  evil,  involved  in  the  greater  or  less  reliance 
which  they  can  place  in  each  others'  words,  acts  the  part  of  one  of  their 
worst  enemies." 


TRUTHFULNESS  AND  ITS  PROBLEMS  245 

stantly  on  our  guard;  and  one  lie  is  very  likely  to  need  prop- 
ping by  others.  We  are  led  easily  into  deep  waters,  and  dis- 
cover 

"what  a  tangled  web  we  weave 
When  first  we  practise  to  deceive." 

But  when  we  tell  the  truth,  we  have  no  need  to  remember 
what  we  said;  there  is  a  care-free  heartiness  about  the  life 
that  is  open  and  aboveboard  that  the  liar,  unless  he  has 
given  up  trying  to  maintain  a  reputation,  never  knows. 

(2)  Lying  is  usually  a  symptom  —  of  selfishness,  vanity, 
greed,  slovenliness,  or  some  other  vicious  tendency  which  a 
man  cannot  afford  to  tolerate.  Refusing  to  give  vent  in 
speech  to  these  undesirable  states  of  mind  helps  to  atrophy 
them,  while  every  expression  of  them  insures  them  a  deeper 
hold.  Untruthfulness  is  the  great  ally  of  all  forms  of  dis- 
honesty; and  strict  scruples  against  lying  make  it  much 
easier  to  clear  them  from  the  soul.  This  is  the  best  vantage- 
point  from  which  to  attack  the  haK-conscious  egotism  which 
seeks  to  create  a  false  impression  of  one's  virtues  or  powers, 
the  insidiously  growing  avarice  that  instinctively  overvalues 
goods  for  sale  and  disparages  what  is  offered.  It  is  a  good 
vantage-point  from  which  to  attack  carelessness,  inaccuracy, 
and  negligence;  the  man  who  has  trained  himself  to  precision 
of  speech,  who  is  painstakingly  honest  in  his  statements, 
who  qualifies  and  discriminates,  and  hits  the  bull's  eye  in 
his  descriptions  of  fact,  can  be  pretty  safely  depended  upon 
to  do  things  rightly  as  well.  The  selfish  lie  is  never  justifiable, 
because  selfishness  is  never  justifiable;  the  cowardly  lie  — 
"lying  out  of"  unpleasant  consequences  —  is  wrong, 
because  cowardice  is  wrong.  To  banish  the  symptoms  may 
not  wholly  banish  the  underlying  causes,  but  it  is  one  good 
way  to  go  about  it.  At  least,  the  lies  are  danger  signals. 

(3)  The  habit  of  lying  is  very  easily  acquired;  and  the 
habitual  liar  is  sure,  sooner  or  later,  to  be  caught  and  to  be 


246  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

despised.  He  has  forfeited  the  confidence  of  men  and  will 
find  it  almost  impossible  to  regain  it  or  to  win  a  position  of 
trust.  If  one  must  lie,  then,  it  pays  to  lie  boldly,  as  a  definite 
and  authorized  exception  to  one's  general  rule;  in  this  way 
one  may  keep  from  sliding  unawares  into  the  habit.  All 
equivocations  and  dissimulations,  all  literal  truths  that  are 
really  deceptions,  all  attempts  to  salve  one's  own  conscience 
by  making  one's  statements  true  "in  a  sense,"  and  yet  gain 
the  advantage  of  an  out-and-out  lie,  are  miserable  make- 
shifts and  utterly  demoralizing.  There  is  "not  much  in  a 
truthfulness  which  is  only  phrase-deep."  Whether  we 
deceive  others  or  no,  we  cannot  afford  to  deceive  ourselves; 
we  should  never  deviate  a  hair's  breadth  from  the  truth 
without  acknowledging  the  deviation  to  ourselves  as  a  neces- 
sary but  unfortunate  evil.  A  man  may  say  nothing  but  what 
is  true,  and  yet  intentionally  give  a  wrong  impression; 
"truth  in  spirit,  not  truth  to  the  letter,  is  the  true  veracity." 
"A  lie  may  be  told  by  a  truth,  or  a  truth  conveyed  by  a  lie." 
"A  man  may  have  sat  in  a  room  for  hours  and  not  opened 
his  teeth,  and  yet  come  out  of  that  room  a  disloyal  friend  or 
a  vile  calumniator."  ^ 

If  a  man  lies  deliberately  and  regretfully,  for  an  end  that 
seems  to  him  to  require  it,  he  may  be  making  a  mistake;  but 
he  is  escaping  the  worst  danger  of  lying.  He  is  not  corrupt- 
ing his  soul,  blurring  his  vision  of  the  line  between  sincerity 
and  insincerity,  and  numbing  his  conscience  so  that  presently 
he  will  lie  as  a  matter  of  course  —  and  be  universally  dis- 
trusted. 

All  of  this  is  very  clear,  and  suflBciently  explains  our  ideal 
of  veracity.  But  it  is  not  enough  for  moralists  to  dwell  upon 
the  general  necessity  of  truthfulness;  the  problems  con- 
nected therewith  arise  when  one  asks.  Are  there  not  legiti^ 
*  Stevenson,  Virginibus  Puerisque,  chap.  iv.  * 


TRUTHFULNESS  AND  ITS  PROBLEMS  247 

mate  or  even  obligatory  exceptions  to  the  rule?  Except  for  a 
few  theorists  who  are  more  attracted  by  unity  and  simplicity 
than  by  the  concrete  complexities  of  life,  practically  all  agree 
that  there  are  occasions  when  lying  is  necessary,  occasions 
when  the  confidence  of  men  would  not  be  destroyed  by  a  lie 
because  of  the  clearly  exceptional  nature  of  the  case.  Can 
we  lay  down  any  useful  rules  in  the  matter,  indicating  what 
types  of  cases  require  untruthfulness? 

What  exceptions  are  allowable  to  the  duty  of  truthfulness? 

Love  undoubtedly  sometimes  requires,  and  oftener  stiD 
excuses,  a  he. 

(1)  There  are  the  trite  cases  where  by  misinformation  a 
prospective  murderer  is  misled  and  his  potential  victim 
saved  ;^  where  a  sick  man,  who  would  have  less  chance  of 
recovery  if  he  realized  his  dangerous  condition,  is  cheered 
and  carried  over  the  critical  point  by  loving  deception; 
where  a  theater  catches  fire  and  a  disastrous  panic  is  averted 
by  a  statement  to  the  audience  that  one  of  the  actors  has 
fallen  ill,  and  the  performance  must  be  ended.  In  such  cases 
it  is  foolish  to  talk  of  the  possibility  of  evasion;  it  is  direct 
misstatement  that  is  necessary  to  prevent  the  great  evil  that 
knowledge,  or  even  suspicion  of  the  truth,  might  entail. 
Truthfulness  under  such  circumstances,  or  even  the  taking 
of  a  chance  by  attempting  to  effect  deception  without  literal 
untruth,  would  be  brutal  and  inexcusable.  As  Saleeby  puts 
it,  "When  the  choice  is  between  being  a  liar  or  a  brute,  only 

*  Cf.  the  somewhat  similar  situation  in  Victor  Hugo's  Les  Miserablea 
(Fantine,  last  chapter)  where  Soeur  Simplice  lies  to  Javert  about  Jean 
Valjean.  Hugo  applauds  the  lie  perhaps  too  extravagantly  ("O  sainte  fille! 
que  ce  mensonge  vous  soit  compte  dans  le  paradis!");  but  few  probably 
would  condemn  it.  Another  interesting  case  is  that  of  a  French  girl  in  the 
days  of  the  Commune.  On  her  way  to  execution  herfiancS  tried  vo  interfere; 
but  she,  realizing  that  if  he  were  known  to  be  her  lover  he  would  likewise 
be  executed,  looked  coldly  upon  him  and  said,  "Sir,  I  never  knew  you!" 


tiS  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

brutal  people  can  tell  the  truth  or  hesitate  to  lie  —  and  that 
right  roundly."  ^  In  such  cases  the  public,  including  the  very 
people  deceived  (except  the  murderer,  who  deserves  no  con- 
sideration), applaud  the  lie;  no  lack  of  confidence  is  engen- 
dered. 

Other  cases,  less  commonly  discussed,  are  equally  clear. 
A  mother  has  just  lost  a  son  whom  she  has  idealized  and 
believed  to  be  pure;  his  classmates  know  him  to  have  been 
a  rake.  If  she  asks  them  about  his  character,  will  not  all 
feel  called  upon  to  deceive  her,  and  leave  her  in  her  bereave- 
ment at  least  free  from  that  worst  sting?  When  a  timid 
woman  or  a  sensitive  child  is  alarmed,  —  say,  for  example, 
at  sea  in  a  fog,  —  will  not  a  considerate  companion  reiterate 
assurance  that  there  is  little  or  no  danger,  even  when  he 
himself  believes  the  risk  may  be  great?  When  a  man  is 
asked  about  some  matter  which  he  has  promised  to  keep 
secret,  if  the  attempt  to  evade  the  question  in  the  nature  of 
the  case  is  practically  a  letting-out  of  the  secret,  there  seems 
sometimes  to  be  hardly  an  alternative  to  lying.  Mrs. 
Gerould  puts  it  thus:  "A  question  put  by  some  one  who  has 
no  right  ...  to  the  information  demanded,  deserves  no 
truth.  If  a  casual  gossip  should  ask  me  whether  my  unmar- 
ried great-aunt  lived  beyond  her  means,  I  should  feel  justi- 
fied in  saying  that  she  did  not  although  it  might  be  the 
private  family  scandal  that  she  did.  There  are  inquiries 
which  are  a  sort  of  moral  burglary."^ 

(2)  In  regard  to  the  little  lies  which  form  a  part  of  the 
conventions  of  polite  society,  there  may  be  difference  of 
opinion.  Their  aim  is  to  obviate  hurting  people's  feelingSs 
to  oil  the  wheels  of  social  intercourse;  no  one  is  seriously 

1  Ethics,  p.  lOS. 

'  In  the  Atlantic  essay  referred  to  at  the  end  of  this  chapter.  The 
unassigned  quotations  following  are  from  that  paper,  which  I  am  particu- 
larly glad  to  commend  after  rather  curtly  criticizing  that  other  essay  of  heiS 
in  the  preceding  chapter. 


TRUTHFULNESS  AND  ITS  PROBLEMS  249 

misled  by  them.  When  asked  by  one's  hostess  if  one  likes 
what  is  apparently  the  only  dish  provided,  or  if  one  has  had 
enough  when  one  is  really  still  hungry,  the  average  courteous 
man  will  murmur  a  gallant  falsehood.  WTiat  harm  can  be 
done  thereby,  and  why  cause  her  useless  embarrassment? 
"We  simply  have  to  be  polite  as  our  race  and  clime  under- 
stand  politeness,  and  no  one  except  a  naif  is  really  going  to 
take  this  sort  of  thing  seriously.'*  "To  thank  a  stupid 
hostess  for  the  pleasure  she  has  not  given,  is  loving  one's 
neighbor  as  one's  self."  "I  know  only  one  person  whom  I 
could  count  on  not  to  indulge  herself  in  these  conventional 
falsehoods,  and  she  has  never  been  able,  so  far  as  I  know,  to 
keep  a  friend.  The  habit  of  literal  truth-telling,  frankly,  is 
self-indulgence  of  the  worst."  In  some  circles,  at  least,  the 
phrase  "not  at  home"  is  generally  understood  as  a  politer 
form  of  "not  seeing  visitors." 

It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  there  is  danger  in 
these  courteous  untruths.  If  the  visitor  does  not  understand 
the  "not  at  home"  in  the  conventional  sense,  she  may  be 
deeply  hurt  and  lose  her  trust  in  her  friend,  if  she  by  chance 
discovers  her  to  have  been  in  the  house  at  the  time.  Nor  is  it 
always  wise  to  truckle  to  sensibilities  that  may  be  foohsh; 
blunt  truthfulness,  even  if  unpalatable,  is  often  in  the  end 
the  best  service.  There  are  cases  where  untruthfulness  is 
shirking  one's  duty,  just  as  there  are  cases  where  truthfulness 
is  mean  or  brutal.  To  tell  what  we  honestly  think  of  a  per- 
son, or  his  work,  may  mean  to  discourage  him  and  invite 
demoralization  or  failure;  to  attribute  virtues  or  powers  to 
him  which  he  actually  does  not  possess  may  be  to  foster 
those  virtues  or  powers  in  him.  Or  the  reverse  may  be  the 
case;  his  individual  need  may  be  of  frank  criticism  or  rebuke. 
The  concrete  decision  can  only  be  reached  by  following  the 
guidance  of  the  law  of  kindness,  the  Apostle's  counsel  of 
"speaking  truth  in  love." 


£50  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

(3)  In  this  connection  it  may  be  well  to  go  further  and 
emphasize  the  fact  that  there  are  many  cases,  not  necessi- 
tating a  lie,  where  the  truth  is  not  to  be  thrust  at  people. 

"  Friend,  though  thy  soul  should  bum  thee,  yet  be  still. 
Thoughts  were  not  meant  for  strife,  nor  tongues  for  swords. 
He  that  sees  clear  is  gentlest  of  his  words. 
And  that's  not  truth  that  hath  the  heart  to  kill." 

There  are  usually  pleasant  enough  things  that  one  can  say 
—  though  one  may  be  hard  put  to  it;  and  if  the  truth  must 
be  told,  it  may  often  be  sugar-coated.  President  Hadley, 
when  a  young  man,  was  receiving  instructions  for  a  delicate 
negotiation.  "  K  the  issue  is  forced  upon  us,"  he  interrupted, 
"there  is,  I  think,  nothing  to  do  but  to  tell  the  truth." 
*'Even  then,"  replied  his  chief,  "not  butt  end  foremost." 

Cases  of  religious  disbehef  will  occur  to  every  one.  While 
all  hypocrisy  and  truckling  to  the  majority  opinion  is  ignoble, 
the  blunt  announcement  of  disbelief  may  do  much  more  harm 
than  good.  Truth  is  not  the  only  ideal;  men  live  by  their 
beliefs,  and  one  who  cannot  accept  a  doctrine  which  is  pre- 
cious and  inspiring  to  others  should  think  twice  before  help- 
ing to  destroy  it.  Not  only  may  he,  after  all,  be  in  the  wrong, 
or  but  half  right;  even  if  he  is  wholly  right,  it  may  not  be 
wise  to  thrust  his  truth  upon  those  whom  it  may  discourage 
or  morally  paralyze.^ 

In  what  directions  are  our  standards  of  truthfulness  low? 

Trutlifulness  in  private  affairs  averages  fairly  high  in  our 

times.  Many  people  will,  indeed,  lie  about  the  age  of  a  child 

for  the  sake  of  paying  the  half-fare  rate,  use  the  return  half 

of  a  round-trip  ticket  sold  only  for  the  original  purchaser's 

use,  or  look  unconcernedly  out  of  the  window  if  they  think 

*  On  the  ethics  of  outspokenness  in  religious  matters,  see  H.  Sidgwick, 
PToctical  Ethics,  chap,  vi;  J.  S.  Mill,  Inaugural  Address  at  St.  Andrews; 
Matthew  Arnold,  Prefaces  to  Literature  and  Dogma  and  God  and  the  Bible, 
F.  Paulsen,  System  of  Ethics,  bk.  in,  chap,  xi,  sec.  10. 


TRUTHFULNESS  AND  ITS  PROBLEMS       251 

the  conductor  will  pass  them  by  without  collecting  fare. 
Certain  forms  of  such  oral  or  tacit  lying  are  so  common  that 
people  of  looser  standards  adopt  them  with  the  excuse  that 
"every  one  does  it,"  or  that  "the  company  can  afford  to  lose 
it.'*  But  in  more  pubUc  matters  the  prevalence  of  untruth- 
fulness is  much  more  shocking.  Standards  are  low  or  unfor« 
mulated,  and  it  is  often  extremely  difficult  for  the  honorable 
man  to  know  what  to  do;  strict  truthfulness  would  deprive 
him  of  his  position.  We  may  barely  hint  at  some  of  these 
situations. 

(1)  In  business,  misstatement  is  generally  expected  of  a 
salesman.  Advertisements  of  bargains,  for  example,  have  to 
be  discounted  by  the  wary  shopper.  "$10  value,  reduced  to 
$3.98,"  may  mean  something  worth  really  $3.  "Finest 
quality"  may  mean  average  quaUty;  goods  passed  off  as 
first-class  may  be  shoddy  or  adulterated.  Labels  on  food- 
stuffs and  drugs  are,  happily,  controlled  to  some  degree  by 
the  national  government;  there  ought  to  be  a  similar  con- 
trol over  all  advertising.  Much  is  being  done  by  the  better 
magazines  in  investigating  goods  and  refusing  untruthful 
advertising;  and  many  houses  have  built  up  a  deserved  repu- 
tation for  reliability.  But  still  the  economical  householder 
has  to  spend  much  time  in  comparing  prices  and  studying 
values,  that  he  may  be  sure  he  is  not  being  cheated. 

(2)  In  pohtics,  frank  truth-telling  is  almost  rare.  It  is 
deemed  necessary  to  suppress  what  sounds  unfavorable  to  a 
candidate's  chances,  to  make  unfair  insinuations  against 
opponents,  to  juggle  statistics,  emphasize  half-truths,  and 
work  generally  for  the  party  by  fair  means  or  foul.  Too  great 
candor  in  admitting  the  truth  in  opponents'  arguments  or 
the  worth  of  their  candidates  would  be  sharply  reprimanded 
by  party  leaders. 

Especially  in  international  diplomacy  is  truthfulness  far 
to  seek.  Secretary  Hay,  indeed,  endeavored  to  carry  out  the 


252  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

policy  stated  in  the  following  words:  "The  principles  which 
have  guided  us  have  been  of  limpid  simplicity.  .  .  .  We 
have  set  no  traps;  we  have  wasted  no  time  in  evading  the 
imaginary  traps  of  others.  .  .  .  There  might  be  worse  repu- 
tations for  a  country  to  acquire  than  that  of  always  speaking 
the  truth,  and  always  expecting  it  from  others.  In  bargain- 
ing we  have  tried  not  to  get  the  worst  of  the  deal,  always 
remembering,  however,  that  the  best  bargains  are  those  that 
satisfy  both  sides.  .  .  .  Let  us  hope  we  may  never  be  big 
enough  to  outgrow  our  conscience."  Other  American  diplo- 
mats have  followed  the  same  ideal.  But  American  diplo- 
macy has  been  labeled  abroad  as  "crude,"  and  is  perpetu- 
ally in  danger  of  lapsing  from  this  moral  level. 

(3)  The  profession  of  the  lawyer  presents  peculiarly 
difficult  problems.  May  he  so  manipulate  the  facts  in  his 
plea  as  to  convince  a  jury  of  what  he  is  himself  not  con- 
vinced? May  he  by  use  of  the  argumentum  ad  populuniy  by 
his  eloquence  and  skill,  win  a  case  which  he  does  not  believe 
in  at  heart?  In  some  ancient  codes  lawyers  had  to  swear  not 
to  defend  causes  which  they  believed  unjust.  But  this  is 
hardly  fair  to  a  client,  since,  even  though  appearances  are 
against  him,  he  may  be  innocent;  whatever  can  be  said  for 
him  should  be  discovered  and  presented  to  the  tribunal. 
Dr.  Johnson  said:  "You  are  not  to  deceive  your  client  with 
false  representations  of  your  opinion,  you  are  not  to  tell  lies 
to  the  judge,  but  you  need  have  no  scruple  about  taking  up 
a  case  which  you  believe  to  be  bad,  or  affecting  a  warmth 
which  you  do  not  feel.  You  do  not  know  your  cause  to  be 
bad  till  the  judge  determines  it.  .  .  .  An  argument  which 
does  not  convince  you  may  convince  the  judge,  and,  if  it 
does  convince  him,  you  are  wrong  and  he  is  right."  ^ 

1  Quoted  by  W.  E.  II.  Lecky,  The  Map  of  Life,  p.  110.  The  chapter 
which  contains  this  quotation  gives  an  interesting  discussion  of  the  ethics 
of  the  lawyer  and  some  further  references  on  the  subject. 


TRUTHFULNESS  AND   ITS   PROBLEMS  253 

This  dilemma  of  the  lawyer  could  be  matched  by  equally 
doubtful  situations  that  confront  the  physician/  and  mem- 
bers of  the  other  professions.  There  is  need  of  acknowledged 
professional  codes,  drawn  up  by  representative  members, 
and  enforced  by  public  opinion  within  the  profession  and 
perhaps  by  the  danger  of  expulsion  from  membership  in  the 
professional  associations.  It  is  largely  the  variation  in  prac- 
tice between  equally  conscientious  members  that  causes  the 
distrust  and  disorder  of  our  present  situation.  Truthfulness 
must  be  standardized  for  the  professions.^ 

(4)  The  author,  whether  of  books  or  essays  or  reviews, 
has  to  face  particularly  powerful  temptations.  It  is  so  easy 
to  overstate  his  case,  to  omit  facts  that  make  against  his 
conclusions,  to  use  colored  words,  to  beg  the  question 
adroitly,  to  create  prejudice  by  unfair  epithets,  to  evade 
difficult  questions,  to  take  the  popular  side  of  a  debated 
matter  at  the  cost  of  loyalty  to  truth.  Controversy  almost 
inevitably  breeds  inaccuracy;  there  are  few  ^Titers  who  fight 
fair.  Quotations,  torn  from  their  context,  mislead;  carefully 
chosen  figures  give  a  wrong  impression;  the  reviewer  is 
tempted  to  pick  out  passages  that  support  only  his  conten- 
tion, whether  eulogistic  or  depreciatory.  Leslie  Stephen 
speaks  of  "the  ease  with  which  a  man  endowed  with  a  gift 
of  popular  rhetoric,  and  a  facility  for  catching  at  the  cur- 
rent phrases,  can  set  up  as  teacher,  however  palpable  to  the 
initiated  may  be  his  ignorance."  A  larger  proportion  of  the 
great  mass  of  books  yearly  published  are  mere  trash,  appeal- 
ing to  untrained  readers,  and  only  confirming  them  in  unwar- 
ranted beliefs  and  opinions.  Few  there  are  who  are  really 
fit  to  teach  the  public;  and  of  those  there  are  fewer  still  who 

^  See,  for  a  discussion  of  the  ethics  of  the  medical  profession,  G.  Bernard 
Shaw,  Preface  to  The  Doctor  s  Dilemma,  and  B.  J.  Hendrick,  "The  New 
Medical  Ethics,"  in  McClure's  Magazine,  vol.  42,  p.  117, 

*  On  professional  codes,  see  IL  Jeffs,  Concerning  Conscience,  chap.  viii. 


254  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

love  truth  more  than  the  triumph  of  their  opinion,  who  are 
candid,  scrupulous,  and  exact  in  their  statements.  There  is 
doubtless  little  conscious  deception;  but  there  is  a  great  deal 
of  misstatement  which  is  inexcusable,  and  due  either  to 
slovenliness,  lack  of  proper  training,  or  partisanship. 

This  brings  us  to  the  similar  and  even  graver  evils  in  our 
modern  newspapers,  which  we  must  pause  to  study  in  some- 
what greater  detail.  For  nowhere  is  untruthfulness  so  ram- 
pant and  so  shameless  as  in  contemporary  journalism. 

The  ethics  of  journalism. 

(1)  The  gravest  evil  in  contemporary  journalism  is  the 
suppression  or  distortion  of  news  in  the  interest  of  the  own- 
ers, of  political  parties,  or  "big  business."  It  is  impossible  to 
rely  on  the  political  or  industrial  information  given  in  our 
newspapers;  they  are  privately  owned,  subservient  to  '*the 
interests,"  unwillirg  to  publish  anything  that  will  offend 
them.  They  misrepresent  facts,  give  prejudiced  accounts  of 
events,  gloss  over  occurrences  unfavorable  to  their  ends, 
circulate  unfounded  rumors  to  create  opinion,  pounce  upon 
every  flaw  in  the  records  of  opponents,  —  going  often  to  the 
point  of  shameless  libel,  —  while  eulogizing  indiscriminately 
the  politicians  of  their  own  party.  They  cannot  be  counted 
on  to  attack  industrial  wrongs  or  politically  protected  vice. 
They  are  organs  neither  of  an  impartial  truth-seeking  nor 
of  public  service.  However  conscientious  the  reporters  and 
editors  might  wish  to  be,  they  are  bound,  by  the  fear  of 
dismissal,  to  follow  the  policy  of  the  owners. 

(2)  No  less  reprehensible,  though  somewhat  less  impop 
tant,  is  the  toadying  of  the  newspapers  to  their  advertisers. 
The  average  paper  could  not  exist  were  it  not  for  this  source 
of  income,  and  it  cannot  afi'ord  to  refuse  the  big  advertise- 
ments even  when  they  are  pernicious  to  the  morals  or  health 
of  the  community.  So  we  are  confronted  daily  by  the  pre- 


TRUTHFULNESS  AND   ITS  PROBLEMS  265 

posterous  claims  of  the  patent-medicine  fakirs,  who  injure 
the  health  and  drain  the  pocketbooks  of  the  guileless.  So 
we  are  exposed  to  the  plausible  suggestions  of  the  swindlers, 
feasted  with  glowing  prospectuses  of  mines  that  will  never 
yield  a  dividend,  or  eulogistic  descriptions  of  house  lots  to 
be  sacrificed  at  a  price  that  is  really  double  their  worth.  In 
a  recent  postal  raid  the  financial  frauds  exp>osed  had  fleeced 
the  public  of  nearly  eighty  million  dollars,  about  a  third  of 
which  had  been  spent  in  advertising. 

The  most  serious  aspect  of  this  matter  is  the  foolish  silence 
of  the  papers  with  reference  to  anything  that  might  injure 
the  business  of  their  advertisers;  because  of  this,  many 
wi'ongs  are  hushed  up  and  many  reforms  blocked.  The 
papers  are  muzzled  because  they  cannot  afford  to  tell  the 
truth  when  it  will  offend  those  who  supply  their  revenue. 

(3)  Less  harmful,  but  more  superficially  conspicuous,  is 
the  tendency  toward  the  fabrication  of  imaginary  news,  to 
attract  attention  and  sell  the  paper.  Huge  headlines 
announce  some  exciting  event,  which  below  is  inconspicu- 
ously acknowledged  to  be  but  a  rumor.  It  will  be  denied  the 
next  day  in  an  obscure  corner,  while  the  front  page  is  devoted 
to  some  new  sensation.  This  "yellow  journaUsm"  is  very 
irritating  to  one  who  cares  more  for  facts  than  for  thrills; 
and  the  more  reputable  newspapers  have  stood  out  against 
this  disgraceful  habit  of  their  less  scrupulous  rivals.  Mr. 
Pulitzer,  the  son  of  the  famous  editor  of  the  New  York 
"World,"  in  an  address  at  the  opening  of  the  Columbia 
University  School  of  Journahsm,  spoke  vehemently  against 
this  evil:  "The  newspaper  which  sells  the  public  deliberate 
fakes  instead  of  facts  is  selling  adulterated  goods  just  as 
surely  as  does  the  rascal  who  puts  salicyUc  acid  in  canned 
meats  or  arsenical  coloring  in  preserves;  and  it  ought  to  be 
subject  to  the  same  penalties  for  adulteration  as  are  these 
other  adulterators.  The  fakir  is  a  liar.  ...  If  he  is  guilty 


256  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

of  a  fake  that  injures  people,  he  is  not  only  a  vicious  liar 
but  often  a  moral  assassin  as  well;  but  in  either  event  he  is  a 
liar,  and  it  is  only  by  treating  him  uncompromisingly  as 
such  that  he  may  be  corrected  if  he  is  not  yet  a  confirmed 
fakir,  or  rooted  out  if  he  is  an  inveterate  fakir." 

There  is  surely  enough,  for  those  who  have  eyes  to  see, 
that  is  dramatic  and  exciting  in  actual  life  without  depend- 
ing upon  fictitious  news.  Chesterton  berates  the  contem- 
porary press  for  failing  to  give  us  the  thrill  of  reality.  It 
"offends  as  being  not  sensational  or  violent  enough;  .  .  . 
does  not  merely  fail  to  exaggerate  life  —  it  positively  under- 
rates it.  With  the  whole  world  full  of  big  and  dubious 
institutions,  with  the  whole  wickedness  of  civilization  star- 
ing them  in  the  face,  their  idea  of  being  bold  and  bright  is  to 
attack  the  War  Office.  .  .  .  Something  which  is  an  old  joke 
in  fourth-rate  comic  papers"^ 

(4)  Another  danger  of  our  irresponsible  journalism  lies  in 
pandering  to  prejudices  and  antipathies,  in  stirring  up  class 
hatred  or  national  jingoism.  Evil  motives  are  attributed  to 
foreign  powers;  the  British  are  scheming  to  control  our  mer- 
chant marine;  the  Japanese  are  preparing  to  invade  our 
Pacific  Coast.  Insignificant  words  of  individuals  are  head- 
lined and  treated  as  portentous;  foreign  peoples  are  carica- 
tured; our  national  "honor"  is  held  to  be  in  danger  daily. 
Or  the  capitalists  are  pictured  as  universally  fat  and  greedy 
and  unscrupulous;  anarchism  is  encouraged  —  as  in  the 
case  of  the  murderer  of  McKinley,  who  was  directly  incited 
to  his  deed  by  the  violent  diatribes  of  a  contemporary  news- 
paper. Such  demagoguery  might  flourish  even  with  strict 
regard  for  truthfulness;  but  it  becomes  far  worse  when,  as 
usual,  in  its  appeal  to  popular  prejudices,  it  exaggerates  and 
invents  and  suppresses  facts. 

(5)  The  notorious  emphasis  upon  crime  and  scandal  may 
*  "The  Mildness  of  the  Yellow  Press,"  chap,  viii  of  Ueretica. 


TRUTHFULNESS  AND   ITS  PROBLEMS  ftffj 

be  included  in  our  summary  of  journalistic  evils.  Every 
unpleasant  fact  that  ought,  from  kindness  to  those  concerned 
and  from  regard  to  the  morals  of  the  readers,  to  be  ignored 
or  passed  lightly  over,  is  instead  dragged  out  into  the  light. 
The  delight  in  besmirching  supposedly  respectable  citizens, 
the  brutal  intrusion  into  private  unhappiness,  the  detailed 
description  of  domestic  tragedy,  is  nothing  short  of  out- 
rageous. Pictures  of  adulterers  and  murderers,  of  the 
instruments  and  scenes  of  crimes,  precise  instructions  to  the 
uninitiated  for  their  commission,  explanations  of  the  success 
of  burglary  or  train- wreckers,  help  marvelously  to  sell  a 
paper,  but  do  not  help  the  morals  of  the  younger  generation. 
No  one  can  estimate  the  amount  of  sexual  stimulation,  of 
suggestion  to  sin  and  vice,  for  which  our  newspapers  are 
responsible. 

(6)  In  conclusion,  we  may  mention  a  trivial  matter 
which,  however,  brings  our  newspapers  into  deserved  dis- 
repute —  their  self-laudation  and  boasting.  How  many 
"greatest  American  newspapers"  are  there?  There  are 
even,  in  this  country  alone,  more  than  one  "  World's  greatest 
newspaper!"  From  this  principle  of  conceit  there  are  all 
gradations  down  to  the  humblest  village  paper  that  lies 
about  its  circulation  and  extols  itself  as  the  necessary 
adjunct  of  every  home.  These  overstatements  are  pernicious 
in  their  influence  upon  public  standards  of  accuracy  and 
honesty. 

The  newspaper  is  potentially  an  instrument  of  incalcul- 
able good.  No  other  influence  upon  the  minds  and  morals 
of  the  people  is  so  continuous  and  universal.  Through  the 
newspapers  knowledge  is  disseminated,  judgment  and  out- 
look upon  life  are  crystallized,  political  and  social  beliefs 
are  shaped.  They  might  be  the  means  of  great  social  and 
moral  reforms.    But  so  long  as  they  are  subject  to  the 


258  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

struggle  for  existence  which  necessitates  their  truckling  to 
parties,  to  advertisers,  and  to  public  prejudices  and  passions, 
so  long  their  influence  will  be  largely  unwholesome,  and  they 
will  be  almost  wholly  the  organs  of  the  possessing  classes.  If 
public  opinion  cannot  force  them  to  a  higher  moral  level  in 
their  present  status  as  sources  of  private  profit,  they  must 
be  published  by  the  State  or  by  trustees  of  an  endowment 
fund.  Municipally  owned  papers  are  liable  to  partisanship 
and  corruption,  in  their  way,  and  endowed  papers  to  an 
undue  regard  for  the  interests  of  the  class  to  which  the 
majority  of  the  trustees  may  belong.  But  this  danger  can  be 
averted  by  allotting  a  certain  amount  of  space  in  each  day's 
paper  to  each  political  party  or  important  economic  organiza- 
tion, to  use  as  it  deems  best,  without  censorship.  In  this  v>'ay 
a  paper  can  be  omni-partisan,  and  give  its  readers  an  honest 
view  of  the  varieties  of  current  opinion,  as  well  as  an  ac- 
count of  the  facts  that  a  partisan  paper  might  omit.  WTien 
municipal  government  in  this  country  is  finally  ordered  in 
a  sensible  way,  the  municipal  newspaper  (run  after  the  '*city 
manager"  plan,  perhaps)  will  probably  become  universal. 

F.  Paulsen,  System  of  Ethics,  bk.  ni,  chap.  xi.  L.  Stephen, 
Science  of  Ethics,  chap,  v,  sec.  iv.  C.  F.  Dole,  Ethics  of  Progress , 
pt.  vn,  chaps,  i,  n.  E.  L.  Cabot,  Everyday  Ethics,  chaps,  xix, 
XX.  T.  K.  Abbott,  KanVs  Theory  of  Ethics,  Appendix  i.  Steven- 
son, Virginibus  Puerisque,  chap.  rv.  E.  Westermarck,  Origin  and 
Development  of  Moral  Idca^,  chap.  xxxi.  K.  F.  Gerould,  in  At- 
lantic Monildy,  vol.  112,  p.  454. 

Ethics  of  Journalism:  H.  Holt,  Commercialism  and  Journalism. 
H.  George,  Jr.,  The  Menace  of  Privilege,  bk.  vn,  chap.  i.  W.  E. 
Weyl,  The  New  Democracy,  chap.  ix.  Educational  Review,  vol.  3G, 
p.  121.  Atlantic  Monildy,  vol.  102,  p.  441;  vol.  105,  p.  303;  vol.  106, 
p.  40;  vol.  113,  p.  289.  Forum,  vol.  51,  p.  5Q5.  E.  A.  Ross,  Changing 
America,  chap.  vn.  North  American  Revieio,  vol.  190,  p.  587.  J.  E. 
Rogers,  The  American  Newspaper.  W.  Lippmanii,  Liberty  and  Ifie 
News.  O.  G.  Villard,  Press  Tendencies  and  Dangers.  D.  Dibblee, 
Tlie  Newspaper.  Above  all,  every  one  should  read  Upton  Sinclair's 
The  Brass  Clieck. 


CHAPTER  XX 

CULTURE  AND  ART 

The  function  of  the  newspaper,  which  we  have  been  dis^ 
cussing,  is,  to  a  considerable  extent,  to  widen  our  horizon, 
to  give  us  new  ideas  and  sympathies,  to  enrich  and  brighten 
our  hves;  in  greater  degree,  that  is  the  role  of  the  fine  arts, 
and  of  that  wide  conversance  with  beauty  and  truth  that 
we  call  culture.  Man  is  not  a  mere  worker,  and  efficiency  is 
not  the  only  test  of  value;  the  pursuit  of  truth  and  beauty 
for  its  own  sake  is  a  legitimate  human  ideal.  But  beauty, 
as  we  have  seen,  brings  temptations;  and  even  the  search  for 
truth  may  lure  a  man  away  from  his  duty.  We  must  con- 
sider, then,  how  far  culture,  and  its  outward  expression  in 
art,  may  rightly  claim  the  time  and  energies  of  man. 

What  is  the  value  of  culture  and  art? 

(1)  Culture,  according  to  Matthew  Arnold,^  is  "the  dis- 
interested endeavor  after  man's  perfection.  ...  It  is  in 
endless  additions  to  itself,  in  the  endless  expansion  of  its 
powers,  in  endless  growth  in  wisdom  and  beauty  that  the 
spirit  of  the  human  race  finds  its  ideal."  This  wisdom,  this 
beauty  that  culture  offers  us,  does  not  need  extrinsic  justi- 
fication; it  is,  as  Emerson  so  happily  said,  its  own  excuse  for 
being;  it  is  a  fragment  of  the  ideal;  and  it  means  that  life 
has  in  so  far  been  solved,  its  goal  attained.  It  is  in  itself  a 
great  addition  to  the  worth,  the  richness  and  joy,  of  life,  and 
it  is  a  pledge  to  the  heart  of  the  possibility  of  the  ideal,  a 
reaUzation  of  that  perfection  for  which  we  long  and  strive. 
1  Culture  and  Anarchy,  Preface,  and  chap.  i. 


860  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

It  means  a  multiplication  of  interests,  a  participation  by 
proxy  in  the  throbbing  life  of  mankind,  which  lifts  us  above 
the  disappointments  of  our  personal  fortunes,  helps  us  to 
identify  ourselves  with  the  larger  currents  of  life,  and  to  live 
as  citizens  of  the  world.  A  limitless  resource  against  ennui, 
it  refreshes,  rests,  and  recreates,  relieves  the  tension  of 
our  working  hours,  makes  for  health  and  sanity.  "If  a  man 
find  himseK  with  bread  in  both  hands,"  said  Mohammed, 
**he  should  exchange  one  loaf  for  some  flowers  of  the 
narcissus,  since  the  loaf  feeds  the  body,  indeed,  but  the 
flowers  feed  the  soul." 

There  is  in  certain  quarters  a  tendency  to  disparage 
culture  as  not  practical — ■"  a  spirit  of  cultivated  inaction" 
—  unworthy  of  the  attention  of  serious  men.  The  word 
connotes,  perhaps,  to  these  critics  certain  superficial  polite 
accompKshments,  mere  frills  and  decorations,  which  fritter 
away  our  time  and  dissipate  our  ambitions.  But  in  its 
proper  sense,  culture  is  far  more  than  that ;  it  is  the  compre- 
hension of  the  meaning  of  life  and  the  appreciation  of  its 
beauty.  And  grim  as  is  the  age-long  struggle  with  evil, 
insistent  as  is  the  duty  to  toil  and  suffer  and  achieve,  it  were 
a  harsh  taskmaster  who  should  refuse  to  poor  driven  men 
and  women  the  right  to  snatch  such  innocent  joys  as  they 
can  by  the  way,  to  try  to  understand  the  whirl  of  existence 
in  which  they  are  caught;  in  short,  to  really  live,  as  well  as 
to  earn  a  living.  It  would  be  a  sorry  outcome  if  when  we 
reached  the  age  of  complete  mechanical  efficiency,  with  all 
the  machinery  of  a  complex  industrial  Hfe  well  oiled  and  per- 
fected, we  should  find  ourselves  imaginatively  sterile,  hope- 
lessly utilitarian,  earthbound  in  our  vision. 

(2)  But  the  morahst  need  not  rest  with  this  apology  for 
culture.  By  helping  us  to  understand  the  life  about  us, 
culture  shows  us  the  better  how  to  solve  our  own  problems, 
and  saves  us  from  the  tragedy  of  putting  our  energies  into 


CULTURE  AND  ART  261 

the  wrong  effort.  History  and  biography,  fiction,  poetry, 
and  the  drama  give  us  an  insight  into  the  longings,  the  tempn 
tations,  the  ideals  of  others,  and  so  indirectly  into  our  own 
hearts.  Thus  a  normal  perspective  of  values  is  fostered;  we 
come  to  learn  what  is  base  and  what  is  excellent,  and  have 
our  eyes  opened  to  the  inferior  nature  of  that  with  which  we 
had  before  been  content.  There  is  a  pathos  in  the  ignor- 
ance of  the  uncultivated  man  as  to  what  is  good.  Give  him 
money  to  spend  and  he  will  buy  tawdrj^  furniture  and  imita- 
tion Jewell^',  he  will  go  to  \^lgar  shows  and  read  cheap  and 
silly  trash.  He  is  unaware  of  what  the  best  things  are,  and 
unable  to  spend  his  money  in  such  a  way  as  really  to  improve 
his  mind,  his  health,  or  his  happiness.  Even  in  his  vocation 
he  could  be  helped  by  a  background  of  culture;  the  college 
graduate  outstrips  the  uneducated  man  who  has  had  several 
years  the  start  of  him.  And  no  one  can  tell  how  many  an 
undeveloped  genius  there  may  be,  now  working  at  some 
humble  and  routine  task,  who  might  have  contributed  much 
to  the  world  if  his  mental  horizon  had  been  widened  and 
his  latent  powers  unfolded.  Knowledge  is  p>ower;  we  never 
know  what  bit  of  apparently  useless  insight  may  find  appU- 
cation  in  our  own  lives  and  help  us  to  solve  our  personal 
problems. 

(3)  Moreover,  culture  is  not  only  informative,  it  is 
inspirational.  History  and  biography  fire  the  youth  with 
a  noble  spirit  of  emulation;  poetn%  fiction,  and  the  drama, 
and  to  some  extent  music,  painting,  and  sculpture,  arouse 
the  emotions  and  direct  them  —  if  the  art  is  good  —  into 
propter  channels.  Meunier's  sculptured  figures.  Millet's 
An  gel  us  or  Man  vAth  the  Hoe,  the  oratorio  of  the  Messiah  or 
a  national  song  like  the  Marseillaise,  have  a  stirring  and 
ennobhng  effect  up>on  the  soul ;  while  such  a  poem  as  Moody's 
Ode  in  Time  of  Hesitation^  a  story  like  Dickens's  Christmas 
Carols  or  a  play  like  The  Servant  in  the  House,  may  be  better 


262  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

and  more  efficacious  than  many  a  sermon.  The  study  of  any 
art  has  a  refining  influence,  teaching  exactness  and  restraint, 
proportion,  measure,  discipHne.  And  in  any  case,  if  no  more 
could  be  said,  art  and  culture  substitute  innocent  joys  and 
excitements  for  dangerous  ones,  satisfy  the  craving  for 
sense-enjoyment  by  providing  natural  outlets  and  develop- 
ing normal  powers,  thus  tending  to  check  its  crude  and  un- 
wholesome manifestations.  In  these  ways  they  are  valu- 
able moral  forces,  whose  usefulness  we  ought  not  to  neglect. 
(4)  Culture  socializes.  It  adds  to  our  competitive  life,  to 
our  personal  ambitions  and  self-seeking,  an  unselfish 
pleasure,  a  pleasure  which  we  can  share  with  all,  and  which 
needs  to  be  shared  to  be  best  enjoyed.  Nothing  binds  men 
together  more  joyously  and  with  less  likelihood  of  friction 
than  their  common  love  of  the  beautiful.  All  classes  and  all 
Deoples,  men  of  whatever  trade  or  interests,  may  learn  to 
love  the  same  scarlet  of  dawn,  the  same  stir  and  heave  of 
the  sea,  that  Homer  loved  and  fixed  in  winged  words  for  all 
men  of  all  time.  From  whatever  land  we  come  we  may  thrill 
to  the  words  of  English  Shakespeare  or  Florentine  Dante,  to 
the  chords  of  German  Wagner  and  Italian  Verdi,  to  the 
colors  of  Raphael  and  Murillo,  to  the  noble  thoughts  of 
Athenian  Plato,  Roman  Marcus  Aurelius,  and  Russian 
Tolstoy.  Our  opinions  differ,  our  interests  diverge,  our  aims 
often  cross;  but  in  the  presence  of  high  truth  and  beauty, 
fitly  expressed,  our  differences  are  forgotten  and  we  are  con- 
scious of  our  essential  unity.  Prejudices  and  provincialisms 
crumble,  personal  eccentricities  fade,  barriers  are  broken, 
all  sorts  of  fanaticisms  and  frictions  are  choked  off,  under  the 
influence  of  a  widespread  cultural  education. 

What  is  most  important  in  cultural  education? 

Wisdom  and  beauty  are  vague  words ;  and  to  make  our  dis- 
cussion practical  we  must  indicate  what  concrete  studies 


CULTURE   AND   ART  263 

sliould  find  place  in  the  ideal  curriculum.  It  is  a  matter  of 
relative  values,  since  nearly  every  study  is  of  some  worth; 
and  the  detailed  decision  as  to  subjects  and  methods  must 
be  left  to  the  expert  on  pedagogy.  But  to  present  the  general 
needs  that  education  must  meet  falls  wdthin  our  province. 
In  addition,  then,  to  the  particular  vocational  education 
which  is  to  fit  each  man  for  his  specific  task,  in  addition  to 
that  physical  development  which  must  always  go  hand  in 
hand  with  intellectual  growth,  in  addition  to  that  moral- 
religious  training  and  that  preparation  for  parenthood,  of 
which  we  shall  later  speak,  we  may  mention  three  important 
ideals  to  be  grouped  under  our  general  conception  of  culture. 
(1)  First,  we  must  have  knowledge  of  the  world  we  live  in 
—  not  so  much  masses  of  facts  as  a  comprehension  of  prin- 
ciples, insight  into  relations  and  tendencies.  A  man  should 
be  at  home  upon  the  earth;  he  should  be  able  to  call  the 
stars  by  name,  to  realize  something  of  the  immensities  by 
which  this  spinning  planet  is  surrounded,  and  to  see  in 
every  landscape  a  portion  of  the  wrinkled,  water-eroded 
surface  of  the  globe.  He  should  see  this  apparently  solid 
sphere  as  a  whirl  of  atoms,  and  come  face  to  face  with  the 
old  puzzles  of  matter  and  mind.  He  should  be  able  to  trace 
in  imagination  the  growth  of  stellar  systems;  the  history  of 
our  own  earth;  the  evolution  of  plant  and  animal  life,  from 
the  first  protoplasmic  nuclei  to  the  mammoth  and  mas- 
todon; the  emergence  of  man  from  brutehood  into  self- 
consciousness,  his  triumph  over  nature  and  the  other  ani- 
mals, and  his  achievement  of  civihzation.  He  should  watch 
primitive  man  wTCstling  with  problems  as  yet  partly 
unsolved,  see  him  gradually  establishing  law  and  order, 
inventing  and  discovering,  mastering  his  fate.  He  should 
follow  the  floods  and  ebbs  of  progress,  the  rise  and  fall  of 
nations,  know  the  great  names  of  history  and  have  for 
friends  humanity's  saints  and  heroes.  He  should  be  at  home 


264  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

in  ancient  Israel,  in  classic  Greece,  in  Rome  of  the  Republic, 
in  Italy  of  the  Renaissance,  especially  in  the  early  days  of 
our  own  land,  learning  to  comprehend  and  sympathize  with 
the  struggles  and  ideals  that  have  made  our  nation  what  it  is. 
He  should  understand  the  clash  of  creeds  and  codes,  follow 
the  thoughts  of  Plato,  of  Bacon,  of  Emerson,  and  grasp  the 
essence  of  the  problems  that  now  confront  us.  What  dangers 
lie  before  us,  what  the  great  statesmen  and  reformers  are 
aiming  at,  what  are  the  meaning  and  use  of  our  institutions, 
our  government,  our  laws,  our  morals,  our  religion  —  here 
is  a  hint  of  the  knowledge  that  every  man  who  comes  into 
the  world  should  amass.  To  know  less  than  this  is  to  be  only 
half  alive,  and  unable  to  fulfill  properly  the  duties  of  citizen- 
ship. Widespread  ignorance  of  the  larger  social,  moral, 
poHtical,  religious  problems  of  the  day,  is  ominous  to  the 
Republic;  and  it  is  impossible  to  understand  aright  mthout 
a  background  of  history  and  theory.  The  aim  of  the  schools 
should  be  to  give  not  only  some  detailed  information  but  a 
structural  sense  of  life  as  a  whole,  a  sane  perspective;  and 
to  inspire  an  enthusiasm  for  intellectual  things  which  shall 
outlast  the  early  years  of  schooling.  The  few  facts  imparted 
should  suggest  the  vast  fields  beyond,  and  stir  youth  to  that 
passion  for  truth  which  shall  lead  to  ever  new  vistas  and 
farther  horizons. 

(2)  But  the  most  encyclopaedic  acquaintance  with  facts, 
or  even  with  principles,  is  not  enough;  training  to  think 
accuratelyy  to  reason  logically,  so  as  to  arrive  at  valid  con-= 
elusions  and  be  able  to  discriminate  sound  from  unsound 
arguments  in  others,  is  vitally  necessary.  With  new  and 
intricate  problems  continually  confronting  us,  we  need  the 
temper  that  observes  with  exactness,  and  without  prejudice 
or  passion,  that  judges  truly,  that  thinks  clearly,  and  forms 
independent  convictions.  There  has  been  in  our  educational 
system  an  overemphasis  on  the  acquirement  of  facts,  a 


CULTURE  AND   ART  205 

natural  result  of  our  modern  dependence  upon  books;  too 
much  is  accepted  on  authority,  too  little  thought  out  at 
first  hand.  We  must  "banish  the  idolatry  of  knowledge,"  as 
Ruskin  exliorted,  and  "reahze  that  calling  out  thought  and 
strengthening  the  mind  are  an  entirely  different  and  higher 
process  from  the  putting  in  of  knowledge  and  the  heaping 
up  of  facts."  We  have  many  well-informed  scholars  to  one 
clear  and  reliable  thinker;  the  world  is  full  of  books,  widely 
read  and  applauded,  in  which  the  trained  mind  detects  false 
premises,  fallacious  reasoning,  unwarranted  conclusions. 
When  the  public  is  really  educated,  these  superficially 
plausible  arguments  will  not  be  heeded,  these  appeals  to  the 
prejudices  and  emotions  of  the  reader  will  not  be  tolerated; 
a  stricter  standard  of  logic  will  be  demanded,  and  we  shall 
be  by  so  much  the  nearer  a  solution  of  our  perplexing 
problems.^ 

We  may  include  under  our  ideal  of  clear  thought,  the 
abiUty  to  use  clearly  and  efficiently  the  language  by  which 

^  This  mental  training  can  be  given  not  merely  by  a  specific  course  in 
logic,  but  by  an  insistence  on  exactness  and  the  critical  spirit  in  every  study. 
It  is  particularly  easy  to  cultivate  this  temper  in  scientific  study.  So  Karl 
Pearson,  for  example,  pleads  for  more  science  in  our  schools:  "It  is  the  want 
of  impersonal  judgment,  of  scientific  method,  and  of  accurate  insight  into 
facts,  a  want  largely  due  to  a  non-scientific  training,  which  renders  clear 
thinking  so  rare,  and  random  and  irresponsible  judgments  so  common  in 
the  mass  of  our  citizens  to-day."  {Grammar  of  Science,  Introductory.)  Cf. 
Emerson,  "Education,"  in  Lectures  and  Biographies:  "It  is  better  to  teach 
the  child  arithmetic  and  Latin  grammar  than  rhetoric  or  moral  philosophy, 
because  they  require  exactitude  of  performance;  it  is  made  certain  that  the 
lesson  is  mastered,  and  that  power  of  performance  is  worth  more  than  the 
knowledge."  There  is  in  our  modern  get-knowledge-easy  methods  a  grave 
danger  of  letting  the  child  absorb  wisdom  so  comfortably,  so  almost  uncon- 
sciously, that  its  wits  shall  not  be  sh.Tri)encd  to  grapple  with  fallacies,  to 
refute  specious  arguments,  and  to  find  their  way  through  a  chaos  of  facts 
to  a  correct  conclasion. 

By  way  of  contrast  with  these  pleas  for  science,  the  student  should  read 
Arnold's  argument  for  the  superiority  of  literature,  in  the  address  on 
"Literature  and  Science"  included  in  Discourses  in  America. 


266  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

the  steps  and  conclusions  of  thought  are  formulated  and 
expressed.  Thought  proceeds,  where  it  is  precise  and  logical, 
by  words;  unless  a  man's  vocabulary  is  wide,  unless  his 
understanding  of  the  language  is  exact,  his  thoughts  must 
inevitably  be  vague  and  muddled.  Moreover,  he  will  be 
unable  to  transmit  his  thoughts  clearly  and  readily  to  others. 
The  most  important  tool  for  the  carrying  on  of  life  is  — 
language;  the  slovenliness  and  inadequacy  of  the  average 
man's  speech  is  a  sad  commentary  on  our  boasted  educational 
system. 

(3)  Wide  information  and  a  trained  mind  must  be  supple- 
mented by  a  sound  taste.  To  love  excellence  everywhere,  to 
appreciate  the  good  and  the  beautiful  in  every  phase  of  life, 
should  be  the  third,  and  p>ossibly  most  important,  aim  of 
cultural  education.  It  is,  at  least,  the  prime  function  of  art. 
Art  informs  us  of  life,  its  pursuit  trains  in  precision  and 
judgment;  but  above  all,  it  opens  our  eyes  to  beauty.  The 
man  who  is  versed  in  the  work  of  the  masters  can  never  after 
be  content  with  the  ugliness  and  squalor  that  our  industrial 
civilization  continually  tends  to  increase.  He  has  caught 
the  vision  of  beauty,  and  must  strive  to  shape  his  environ- 
ment toward  that  high  ideal.  The  artist  sees  what  we  had 
not  learned  to  see;  by  isolating  and  perfecting  this  bit  of  the 
ideal,  he  directs  our  attention  to  it  and  teaches  us  to  love  it. 
No  one  can  feel  the  spell  of  a  landscape  by  Corot  or  Innes 
without  delighting  more  deeply  in  such  scenes  in  the  outdoor 
world;  no  one  can  live  long  in  the  atmosphere  of  Greek  art 
without  longing  for  such  a  body  and  such  a  poise  of  spirit. 
We  are  not  accustomed  to  look  at  nature,  or  at  man,  with 
observing  eyes,  to  see  the  richness  of  color  in  sun-kissed 
meadows  or  humming  city  streets,  the  infinite  variations 
of  light  and  shade,  the  depth  of  distance,  the  charm  of  line 
and  composition.  The  picturesque  is  everywhere  about  us, 
undiscerned  and  unloved.    So  the  novel  and  the  drama 


CULTURE  AND  ART  267 

unveil  to  us  the  marvelous  varieties  in  human  character  and 
circumstance,  the  humor  and  dignity  and  pathos  of  life. 
Literature  and  art,  by  revealing  to  us  unsuspected  possibil- 
ities of  beauty,  breed  a  healthy  discontent  with  ugliness  and 
urge  us  on  to  its  banishment.  The  ultimate  aim  of  art  should 
be  to  make  life  beautiful  in  every  nook  and  corner,  to  ele- 
vate the  humdrum  working  days  of  common  men  by  fair 
and  sunny  surroundings,  to  make  manners  gentle  and  gra- 
cious, speech  melodious  and  refined,  homes  pleasant  and 
restful. 

But  art  has  a  further  function.  However  beautiful  and 
harmonious  our  lives,  they  are  at  best  confined  within 
narrow  boundaries;  and  the  lover  of  beauty  will  always 
rejoice  in  the  glimpses  which  art  affords  into  an  ideal  realm 
beyond  his  daily  horizon.  He  will  gaze  eagerly  at  the  master- 
pieces of  color  and  form  that  he  cannot  have  forever  about 
him,  he  will  enrich  his  imagination  with  the  great  scenes  of 
drama,  he  will  solace  his  soul  with  the  cadenced  lines  of 
poetry  and  the  melody  of  music,  he  will  five  with  the 
heroes  of  fiction  for  a  day,  and  return  to  his  work  ennobled 
and  sweetened  by  the  contact  with  these  forms  of  excellence 
which  lie  beyond  the  bounds  of  his  own  outward  life.  In 
two  ways  the  fine  arts  add  to  the  preexisting  beauty  in  a 
man's  life:  by  representing  to  him  beautiful  scenes  and 
objects  which  he  cannot  enjoy  in  themselves,  because  he 
cannot  go  where  they  are,  and  by  creating  from  the  artist's 
imagination  a  new  universe  of  emotions  and  satisfactions, 
congenial  to  the  human  spirit  and  full  of  a  refined  and  pure 

joy- 

What  dangers  are  there  in  culture  and  art  for  life? 

We  must  now  glance  at  the  other  side  of  the  picture. 
Enormous  as  are  the  potentialities  for  good  in  culture  and 
art,  they  also  have  their  perils. 


268  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

(1)  Culture  and  art  must  not  take  time,  energy,  or  money 
that  is  needed  for  work.  Achievement  necessitates  concen- 
tration and  sacrifice;  beauty  must  not  beguile  men  away 
from  service.^  The  boys  and  girls  who  squander  health  in 
their  eagerness  to  explore  the  new  worlds  opening  before 
them,  the  older  folk  who  give  a  disproportionate  share  of 
their  time  and  money  to  music  or  the  theater,  the  voracious 
readers  who  pore  over  every  new  novel  and  magazine  with- 
out really  assimilating  and  using  what  they  read,  are  turning 
what  ought  to  be  recreation  or  inspiration  into  dissipation, 
and  thereby  seriously  impairing  their  efficiency.  It  is  so 
much  easier  to  read  something  new  than  to  meditate  fruit- 
fully upon  what  one  has  read,  to  pass  from  picture  to  picture 
in  a  gallery  and  win  no  genuine  insight  from  any.  A  single 
great  book  thoroughly  mastered  —  the  Bible,  Homer, 
Shakespeare  —  were  better  for  a  man  than  the  superficial 
skimming  of  many,  one  beautiful  picture  well  loved  than  a 
hundred  idly  glanced  at  and  labeled  with  some  trite  com- 
ment. Too  many  of  the  upper  class,  for  whom  limitless 
cultural  opportunities  are  open,  dabble  in  everything,  know 
names  and  schools,  repeat  glibly  the  current  phrases  of 
criticism,  but  miss  the  lesson,  the  clarification  of  insight, 
the  vision  of  the  author  or  artist.  Such  superficial  culture  is 
a  futile  expenditure  of  time  and  money. ^ 

In  this  connection  we  must  mention  the  waste  of  time 
over  what  Arnold  called ''instrument-knowledges."  Years 
are  spent  by  most  upper-class  boys  and  girls  in  half -learning 

^  Cf.  what  Pater  says  of  Winckelmann  {The  Renaissance,  p.  195):  "The 
development  of  his  forec  was  the  single  interest  of  Winckelmann,  unem- 
barrassed by  anything  else  in  him.  Other  interests,  practical  or  intellectual, 
those  slighter  motives  and  talents  not  supreme,  which  in  most  men  are  the 
waste  part  of  nature,  and  drain  away  their  v-itality,  he  plucked  out  and  cast 
from  him." 

2  For  an  arraignment  of  the  money  thrown  away  on  modern  decadent 
Art,  see  Tolstoy's  What  is  Art  ?  chapter  i. 


CULTURE  AND  ART  269 

several  languages  which  they  will  never  use,  in  acquiring  the 
technique  of  the  piano,  or  of  some  other  art  which  they  will 
never  learn  to  practise  with  proficiency.  There  is,  to  be  sure, 
a  certain  mental  training  in  all  this,  but  no  more  than  can  be 
found  in  more  useful  studies.  A  foreign  language  is  essen- 
tially a  tool  for  carrying  on  conversation  with  its  users,  or 
for  utilizing  the  literature  written  therein;  the  technique  of 
an  art  is  a  tool  for  producing  or  copying  beautiful  forms  of 
that  art.  And  except  as  these  tools  are  actually  so  utilized, 
the  time  spent  on  learning  to  handle  them  might  better  be 
otherwise  occupied. 

(2)  More  than  this,  cultural  interests  may  fritter  away 
in  passive  and  useless  thrills  the  emotions  and  energies  that 
ought  to  stimulate  moral  and  practical  activity.  It  is  so 
easy,  where  there  is  money  enough  to  live  on,  to  let  one's 
faculties  become  absorbed  in  the  fascinations  of  study, 
without  applying  it  to  practice;  to  enjoy  the  relatively  com- 
plete attainment  possible  in  the  fine  arts,  and  keep  out  of 
the  dust  and  chaos  and  ugliness  of  real  life.  Or,  when  the 
student  or  art-lover  does  return  to  realities,  after  his  absorp- 
tion in  some  dream-world,  there  is  danger  that  he  carry  over 
into  actual  moral  situations  his  habit  of  passive  contempla- 
tion, that  he  be  content  to  remain  a  spectator  instead  of 
plunging  in  and  taking  sides.  He  has  learned  to  enjoy  the 
spectacle  —  sin,  suffering,  and  all  —  and  lost  the  primitive 
reaction  of  protest  against  evils,  of  practical  response  to 
needs,  and  the  impulse  to  realize  ideals  in  conduct.  Thus 
culture  and  art  may  relax  human  energy  or  scatter  it  in 
trivial  accomplishments;  the  dilettante  spends  his  days  in 
dreaming  rather  than  in  doing.  ^ 

^  Cf.  William  James,  Psychology,  vol.  i,  pp.  125-26:  "Every  time  a  fine 
glow  of  feeling  evaporates  without  bearing  practical  fruit  is  worse  than  a 
chance  lost;  it  works  so  as  positively  to  hinder  future  emotions  from  taking 
the  normal  path  of  discharge.  There  is  no  more  contemptible  type  of  human 


270  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

(3)  Graver  still,  however,  is  the  risk  of  the  overstimula- 
tion of  certain  dangerous  emotions.  The  "artistic  tempera- 
ment" is  notoriously  prone  to  reckless  self-indulgence;  the 
continual  seeking  of  the  immediately  satisfying  tends  to 
weaken  the  powers  of  restraint.  Artists  and  poets,  and  those 
who  immerse  themselves  constantly  in  the  pleasures  of 
sense,  tend  to  chafe  under  the  dull  repressions  of  morality 
and  crave  ever  new  forms  of  excitement.  Art  is  an  emotional 
stimulant;  and  unless  the  emotions  aroused  are  harnessed 
in  the  service  of  morality,  they  are  apt  to  run  amuck. 
Artists  and  authors  often  take  to  drink,  and  almost  always 
have  to  meet  exceptional  sexual  temptations.]  The  most 
beautiful  forms  of  art  are  those  which  have  the  element  of 
sex  interest,' and  the  general  emotional  susceptibility  of  the 
creator  or  lover  of  beauty  makes  the  sex  emotion  particu- 
larly inflammable. 

Other  emotions  also  may  be  unwisely  stimulated  by  art. 
In  times  of  international  friction,  war-songs,  "patriotic" 
speeches,  or  martial  processions  may  arouse  an  unreasoning 

character  than  that  of  the  nerveless  sentimentalist  and  dreamer,  who  spends 
his  life  in  a  weltering  sea  of  sensibility  and  emotion,  but  who  never  does 
a  manly  concrete  deed.  .  .  .  The  habit  of  excessive  novel-reading  and 
theater-going  will  produce  true  monsters  in  this  line.  The  weeping  of  a 
Russian  lady  over  the  fictitious  personages  in  the  play,  while  her  coachman 
is  freezing  to  death  on  his  seat  outside,  is  the  sort  of  thing  that  everywhere 
happens  on  a  less  glaring  scale.  Even  the  habit  of  excessive  indulgence  in 
music,  for  those  who  are  neither  performers  themselves  nor  musically 
gifted  enough  to  take  it  in  a  purely  intellectual  way,  has  probably  a  relaxing 
effect  upon  the  character.  One  becomes  filled  with  emotions  which  habitu- 
ally pass  without  prompting  to  any  deed,  and  so  the  inertly  sentimental 
condition  is  kept  up.  The  remedy  would  be,  never  to  suffer  one's  self  to 
have  an  emotion  at  a  concert,  without  expressing  it  afterward  in  some 
active  way.  Let  the  expression  be  the  least  thing  in  the  world  —  speaking 
genially  to  one's  aunt,  or  giving  up  one's  seat  in  a  horse-car,  if  nothing  more 
heroic  offers  —  but  let  it  not  fail  to  take  place." 

Professor  James  also  refers  in  this  connection  to  an  interesting  paper 
by  Vida  Scudder  in  the  Andover  Review  for  January,  1887,  ou  "Musical 
Devotees  and  Morals." 


CULTURE   AND   ART  271 

jingo  spirit.  The  love  of  deviltrj^  is  fostered  in  boys  by  many 
of  the  penny  novels,  by  sensational  ''movies"  and  news- 
paper "stories";  a  famous  detective  has  said  that  seventy 
per  cent  of  the  crimes  committed  by  boys  under  twenty  are 
traceable  to  "suggestions"  received  from  these  sources. 

Should  art  be  censored  in  the  interests  of  morality? 

Art,  then,  with  its  vast  potentialities  of  both  good  and 
harm,  needs  supervision  in  the  interests  of  human  welfare. 
The  motto,  "Art  for  art's  sake,"  should  not  be  taken  to 
mean  that  what  is  detrimental  to  human  life  must  be  toler- 
ated, just  because  it  is  art.  There  is,  indeed,  this  truth  in 
the  adage,  that  art  does  not  need  to  have  a  moral  or  practi- 
cal use  to  justify  its  existence.  It  may  be  merely  pleasant, 
serving  no  end  beyond  the  enjoyment  of  the  moment.  But 
it  must  not  be  harmful.  It  is  but  one  of  the  many  interests 
in  life,  and  must  be  judged,  like  any  other  interest,  in  the 
light  of  the  greatest  total  good.  We  cannot  say,  "Work  for 
work's  sake,"  " Education  for  education's  sake";  not  even, 
"Morality  for  morality's  sake";  it  is  work,  education, 
morality,  for  the  sake  of  the  ultimately  happiest  human  Hfe. 
The  moralist  must  not  despise  forms  of  art  which  have  no 
ulterior,  utilitarian  value;  but  he  must  insist  that  no  enjoy- 
ment of  art  is  really,  in  the  long  run,  good  for  man  which 
influences  his  life  in  the  unwholesome  ways  we  have  indi- 
cated. Since  morality  is  that  way  of  life  that  gives  it  its 
greatest  worth,  indulgence  in  art  at  the  expense  of  morality 
is  seizing  an  immediate  but  lesser  good  at  the  expense  of  an 
ultimately  greater  good. 

Practically,  however,  the  censorship  of  art  is  the  most 
delicate  of  matters,  because  the  influence  of  the  same  work 
of  art  on  one  person  may  be  widely  different  from  its  effect 
upon  another.  A  play  or  a  picture  that  pleases  or  even 
inspires  one  spectator  may  be  disastrous  to  his  neighbor. 


272  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

And  it  is  always  difficult  to  decide  between  the  claims  o! 
an  immediate  good  and  the  warnings  of  dangers  that  may 
lurk  therein.  But  we  universally  acknowledge  the  duty  of 
some  censorship,  by  prohibiting  the  most  openly  tempt- 
ing pictures,  plays,  and  literature.  And  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  this  supervision  should  be  carried  further  than 
it  now  is. 

The  most  pressing  contemporary  problem  is  that  concern- 
ing the  stage.  ^  Any  number  of  boys  and  girls  owe  their 
undoing  to  the  influences  of  the  theater.  No  other  form  of 
art  now  tolerated  so  frequently  overstimulates  the  sex 
instinct.  The  scant  costumes  permitted,  with  their  conscious 
endeavor  to  reveal  the  feminine  form  as  alluringly  as  possi« 
ble,  the  voluptuous  dances  and  ballets,  the  jokes,  stories, 
and  suggestive  gestures,  and  often  the  low  moral  tone  of  the 
play,  making  light  of  sacred  matters  and  encouraging  lax 
ideas  on  sex  relations,  are  powerful  excitants.  Many  thea- 
ters frankly  pander  to  the  desire  for  such  stimulation;  and 
they  are  crowded.  For  while  human  nature  remains  as  it  is, 
the  young  will  flock  whither  they  can  find  sex  excitement. 

Scarcely  less  dangerous  are  the  magazines  and  books  that 
by  their  pictures  and  their  stories  play  up  to  this  eternal 
instinct.  Even  painters  in  oils  often  use  this  drawing-card; 
the  Paris  salons  have  always  a  considerable  sprinkling  of 
nudes,  in  all  sorts  of  voluptuous  attitudes,  making  a  frank 
appeal  to  desire.  French  literature  abounds  in  books,  some 
of  great  literary  merit,  that  exploit  this  aspect  of  human 
nature;  but  in  every  tongue  there  are  the  Boccaccios  and  the 
Byrons. 

Plato  found  this  problem  in  planning  his  ideal  republic 

^  See  J.  Addams,  The  Spirit  of  Youth  and  the  City  Streets,  chap.  iv.   F 
MacKaye,  The  Civic  Theatre  in  Relation  to  the  Redemption  of  Leisure.  H 
IvlLinsterl^erg,  Psychology  and  Social  Sanity,  pp.  27-43.   W.  Archer,  About 
the  Theatre.  W.  L.  Phelps,  The  Twentieth  Century  Theater.  F.  W.  Chandler, 
Aspects  of  Modern  Drama.  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  89,  p.  497;  vol.  107,  p.  350. 


CULTURE  AND   ART  273 

and  decreed  that  all  voluptuous  and  tempting  art  must  be 
banished.  We  are  rightly  unwilling  to  sacrifice  beauty  and 
enjoyment  to  so  great  an  extent;  such  Puritanism  inevita,bly 
provokes  reaction,  besides  sadly  impoverishing  life.  The 
feminine  form,  at  its  best,  is  exquisitely  lovely;  and  a  perfect 
nude  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  things  in  the  world.  ^  How 
we  shall  retain  this  beauty  to  enrich  our  lives  while  avoiding 
the  overstimulation  of  an  already  dangerously  dominant 
instinct,  is  a  problem  whose  gravity  we  can  but  indicate 
without  presuming  to  offer  a  satisfactory  solution. 

What  can  emphatically  be  said  is  that  artists  must  subor- 
dinate themselves  to  the  welfare  of  life  as  a  whole.  And  this 
is  not  so  great  a  loss,  for  only  that  art  is  of  the  deepest 
beauty  which  expresses  noble  and  wholesome  feelings.  The 
trouble  with  the  artist  is  apt  to  be  that  he  becomes  so 
absorbed  in  the  solution  of  the  practical  difficulties  attend- 
ant upon  his  art  that  he  cares  primarily  for  triumphs  of 
technique,  irrespective  of  the  worth  of  the  feelings  which 
that  technique  is  to  express.  Indeed,  there  is  actually  a  sort 
of  scorn  of  beauty  in  certain  studies  and  studios;  the  "lit- 
erary" or  "artistic"  point  of  view  is  taken  to  mean  a  regard 
only  for  skill  of  execution,  rather  than  for  that  beauty  of 
whose  realization  the  skill  should  be  but  the  means.  There  is, 
indeed,  a  beauty  of  words  and  rhythms,  of  brushwork,  of 
modeling;  but  if  the  poet  does  not  love  beautiful  thoughts 
and  acts,  no  verbal  power  can  make  his  product  great;  and 
if  the  artist  paints  trivial  or  vulgar  subjects  he  wastes  his 
genius.  Too  much  poetry  that  is  sensual,  flippant,  drearily 
pessimistic,  morbid,  or  obscure,  is  included  in  anthologies 
because  cleverly  wrought,  with  a  sense  for  form  and  cadence* 
Too  many  stories,  too  many  pictures,  are  applauded  by 
critics,  though  in  subject  and  tone  they  are  contemptible. 

^  On  the  moral  problem  of  the  nude  in  art,  see  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  88^ 
pp.  286,  858. 


274  PERSON/J.  MORALITY 

As  proofs  of  human  skill  these  works  may  excite  such  admir- 
ation as  we  give  to  a  juggler's  feats;  as  practice  in  handling 
a  stubborn  medium  they  may  be  valuable.  But  the  artist 
who  does  not  have  a  sane  and  high  sense  of  what  is  really 
noble  and  beautiful  in  life  prostitutes  the  talents  by  which 
he  ought  to  serve  the  world.  Often  one  feels  as  Emerson 
felt  when  he  wrote  of  another,  "I  say  to  him,  if  I  could  write 
as  well  as  you,  I  would  write  a  good  deal  better." 

The  bald  truth  is  that  artists  are  seldom  competent  to  be 
final  judges  of  art;  they  are  too  much  behind  the  scenes, 
concerned  too  constantly  with  problems  of  method.  The 
final  judgment  as  to  beauty  can  come  only  from  one  who 
combines  a  delicate  appreciation  of  technique  with  a  wide 
insight  into  life  and  a  sane  perspective  of  its  values.  For 
lack  of  such  a  criticism  of  art,  the  average  man  wanders 
distracted  through  our  art-museums,  with  their  hodge-podge 
of  beautiful  and  ugly  pictures,  wades  through  the  ingeniously 
clever  stories  and  sensationally  original  but  often  meaning- 
less or  trivial  verses  in  the  magazines,  goes  to  a  concert  and 
joins  others  in  applauding  some  brilliant  display  of  vocal 
gymnastics,  some  instrumental  pyrotechnics,  while  his  heart 
is  thirsting  for  high  and  noble  feelings,  for  something  to 
elevate  and  inspire  his  life. 

The  great  poets,  the  great  painters,  the  great  dramat- 
ists and  novelists,  have  been  high-souled  men  as  well  as 
artists,  lovers  of  the  really  beautiful  in  life  as  well  as  mas- 
ters of  their  medium.  Their  art  has  no  conflict  with  mor- 
ality; it  is  rather  its  greatest  stimulus  and  stay.  To  the 
lesser  brood  with  the  gift  of  melody,  of  rhythm,  with  an  eye 
for  color  or  form,  but  without  a  true  perspective  of  human 
values,  we  must  repeat  sadly,  or  even  sternly,  the  poet's 
reproof:  — 

**  Cam'st  thou  from  heaven,  O  child 
Of  light,  but  this  to  declare?" 


CULTURE  AND  ART  275 

On  culture:  Matthew  Arnold,  Culture  and  Anarchy;  "Literature 
and  Science"  (in  Discourses  in  America).  F.  Paulsen,  System  of 
Ethics,  bk.  Ill,  chap.  v.  H.  Spencer,  Education.  H.  Sidgwick, 
Practical  Ethics,  chap.  Yiu.  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  90,  p.  589;  vol. 
97,  p.  433;  vol.  109,  p.  111.  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  vol. 
23,  p.  1.  N.  M.  Butler,  Meaning  of  Education,  chap.  i.  J.  A. 
Symonds,  Culture.  E.  L.  Thorndike,  Education.  W.  C.  Bagley, 
Educational  Values.  W.  C.  Ruediger,  Principles  of  Education. 
H.  H.  Home,  Philosophy  of  Education. 

On  the  moral  censorship  of  art:  Plato,  Republic,  bks.  ii,  iii,  x. 
Aristotle,  Poetics.  Ruskin,  Lectures  on  Art.  Tolstoy,  What  is  Art? 
G.  Santayana,  Reason  in  Art,  chaps,  rx,  xi.  R.  B.  Perry,  Moral 
Economy,  chap.  v.  H.  R.  Haweis,  Music  and  Morals.  Mackenzie, 
Manual  of  Ethics,  chap.  xvi.  C.  Read,  Natural  and  Social  Morals, 
chap.  X.  Forum,  vol.  50,  p.  588;  vol.  51,  p.  664;  vol.  53,  p.  87.  Ber- 
nard Shaw,  Preface  to  Blanco  Posnet.  Hanson,  The  Social  Signifi- 
cance of  the  Motion  Picture.  Outlook,  vol.  107,  p.  412.  S.  H.  Butcher, 
Aristotle:  Theory  of  Poetry  and  Fine  Art,  chap.  v.  J.  P.  Mahaffy, 
Social  Life  in  Greece,  chaps,  xiv,  xv.  E.  A.  Ross,  Social  Control, 
chap.  XX.  F.  Brunetiere,  Art  and  Morality.  P.  Gaultier,  Meaning 
of  Art,  chap.  iii.  H.  H.  Britan,  Philosophy  of  Music,  chap.  xi. 
Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  89,  p.  497;  vol.  96,  p.  77;  vol.  98,  p.  519;  vol. 
119,  p.  372. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  MECHANISM  OF  SELF-CONTROL 

To  discuss,  as  we  have  been  doing,  the  various  duties 
which  are  the  unavoidable  pre-conditions  of  a  lasting  and 
widespread  welfare  for  men,  would  be  futile,  if  we  had  not 
the  ability  to  fulfill  them.  The  power  of  self-control  is  the 
sine  qua  non  of  a  secure  morality,  and  therefore  of  a  secure 
happiness.  But  this  power  seems  often  bafflingly  absent. 
Hard  as  it  is  to  know  what  is  right  to  do,  it  is  harder  yet  for 
many  of  us  to  make  ourselves  do  what  we  know  is  right. 
Life  for  the  average  conscientious  man  is  a  perpetual  battle 
between  two  opposing  tendencies,  that  which  his  better 
self  endorses,  and  that  which  is  easiest  or  most  alluring  at 
the  moment  of  action.  The  latter  course  too  often  seduces 
his  will;  and  for  the  earnest  and  aspiring  this  continual  moral 
failure  constitutes  one  of  the  most  tragic  aspects  of  life.^ 
There  is  no  greater  need  for  most  men  than  that  of  some 
wiser  and  more  effective  method  whereby  those  who  have 
ideals  beyond  their  practice  may  regularly  and  consistently 
realize  them. 

What  are  our  potentialities  of  greater  self-control? 

The  encouraging  side  of  the  matter  is  that  there  have 
been  many,  of  very  various  codes  and  creeds,  who  have 
attained  to  a  nearly  perfect  self-control,  who  easily  and 

^  Cf.  Ovid's  Video  meliora  proboque,  deteriora  sequor.  And  St.  Paul's 
"To  will  is  present  with  me,  but  how  to  perform  that  which  is  good  I  find 
not.  For  the  good  that  I  would  I  do  not,  but  the  evil  which  I  would  not, 
that  I  do."  From  pagan  and  Christian  pen  alike  there  comes  testimony  to 
this  universal  and  disheartening  experience. 


THE  MECHANISM  OF  SELF-CONTROL  877 

almost  inevitably  govern  their  conduct  by  their  ideals. 
Puritans  with  their  personal  Devil,  Christian  Scientists  who 
believe  that  there  is  no  evil  at  all  —  Christians,  Buddhists, 
atheists  —  there  have  been  saints  in  all  the  folds.  The  fact 
seems  to  be  that  the  particular  form  which  our  moral  ideas 
take  matters  much  less  than  the  completeness  with  which 
they  possess  the  mind.  Almost  any  of  the  many  motives  to 
right  conduct  will  reform  a  character  if  it  be  so  stamped 
into  the  mind  as  to  become  the  dominant  idea.  What  is 
necessary  is  some  vivid  and  dominating  anti-sinning  idea 
rammed  deep  into  the  brain.  The  reUgions  have  been  the 
chief  means  of  effecting  this;  and  the  Church,  that  draws 
men  together,  and  into  the  presence  of  God,  for  the  reinforc- 
ing of  their  better  selves,  is  the  most  efficacious  of  instru- 
ments for  the  control  of  sin.  But  the  existence  of  a  vast, 
and  by  most  men  hardly  tapped,  reservoir  of  power  for 
righteousness  (whether  or  not  it  is  thought  of  as  God)  is 
recognized  to-day  by  science  as  well  as  by  rehgion;  and  we 
must  here  discuss  the  matter  in  a  purely  secular  way.  We 
can  control  our  conduct  if  we  care  enough  to  set  about  using 
the  forces  at  our  disposal.  The  various  religions  have  found 
and  used  them;  modern  psychology,  analyzing  their  success, 
shows  us  clearly  and  exactly  how  to  succeed,  even  if  we  stand 
aloof  from  religion  altogether. 

Psychologically  considered,  this  whole  affair  of  saintliness 
or  sinfulness  is  a  matter  of  the  preponderant  idea.  To  have 
merely  resolved  is  not  enough;  our  moral  forces  must  be 
drilled  and  made  ready  before  the  battle.  This  fortifying 
process  we  nowadays  call  "suggestion.*'  By  it  we  can  so 
"set"  our  minds,  so  deepen  the  channels  that  flow  toward 
the  right  actions,  that  when  the  time  of  conflict  comes  our 
minds  will  work  along  those  grooves.  Habit,  to  be  sure, 
means  a  deep-cut  channel  in  the  mind;  it  may  require  much 
effort  to  dig  a  deeper  one  to  take  its  place.  Unless  the  work 


878  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

is  persistently  carried  through,  the  mental  currents,  diverted 
temporarily  into  the  new  course,  will  soak  through  the 
barriers  and  find  their  old  bed  again.  Moreover,  different 
minds  differ  greatly  in  their  plasticity,  their  susceptibility 
to  suggestion.  But  the  great  fact  remains  that  habits  can 
be  made  over,  temptations  rendered  harmless,  and  charac- 
ter formed,  by  this  simple  means. 

It  may  be  worth  while  to  remind  ourselves  of  the  remark- 
able power  of  suggestion.  It  is  most  strikingly  seen  at  work 
in  the  phenomena  of  hypnotism,  because  a  person  who  is 
hypnotized  is  in  a  peculiarly  susceptible  state;  he  is  asleep 
to  everything  but  the  words  of  the  hypnotist,  which  thus 
have  full  influence  over  him,  except  as  checked  and  balanced 
by  the  preexisting  bias  of  his  mind.  Hypnotism  is  simply 
the  perfect  case  of  suggestion,  isolated  from  disturbing  fac- 
tors. The  hypnotizing  process  itself,  the  putting  to  sleep,  is 
only  preliminary  to  the  suggestion;  and  to  patients  who  are 
diflficult  to  hypnotize,  "waking  suggestion"  is  given,  with 
the  patient  in  as  relaxed  and  empty  a  state  of  mind  as  possi- 
ble. The  popular  notion  that  healing  through  hypnotism  is 
uncanny  and  dangerous  is,  of  course,  entirely  erroneous. 
To  be  sure,  every  great  power  has  its  dangers  from  misuse, 
and  hypnotism  is  not  to  be  used  except  for  proper  ends;  but 
there  is  nothing  occult  about  it.  It  simply  uses  the  psycho- 
logical truth  that  the  mind  acts  on  the  predominating  idea, 
by  lulling  to  sleep  all  ideas  but  the  one  wanted  and  impressing 
that  upon  the  mind.  Immediate  and  lasting  moral  changes 
are  daily  being  effected  through  suggestion  by  professional 
hypnotists. 

But  though  the  power  of  suggestion  is  most  obvious  when 
employed  by  the  scientifically  trained  physician  of  to-day, 
it  has  been  successfully,  though  often  unconsciously,  used 
in  all  times.  Prophets  and  saints  of  old,  the  touch  of  a  king's 
hand,  the  sight  of  relics  or  images,  have  wrought  striking 


THE  MECHANISM  OF  SELF-CONTROL  279. 

moral  and  physical  cures  through  this  same  mental  law. 
Christian  Scientists  and  mental  healers  of  various  sorts  are 
curing  people  daily  through  them.  Cases  of  religious  con- 
version, where  a  man's  whole  inner  life  is  turned  about 
through  a  powerful  emotional  appeal,  show  best  of  all  the 
possibilities  of  suggestion  in  the  moral  field. 

These  are  the  extreme  cases.  But,  indeed,  all  our  moral 
education  is,  in  psychological  language,  but  so  much  "sug- 
gestion." The  imperious  necessity  for  man  of  preaching,  of 
ritual  and  liturgy,  of  prayer  and  praise,  is  to  drive  home  the 
high  and  noble  thoughts  which  in  his  sanest  moments  he 
recognizes  to  be  what  he  needs.  The  aim  of  the  preacher  is 
to  bring  to  his  hearers  ideals  of  right  living  and  to  make  them 
as  appealing  and  vivid  as  possible.  Yet  even  the  best  preach- 
ing comes  only  on  Sundays,  and  there  are  six  days  between 
of  other  sorts  of  suggestion,  which  are  often  counter-sugges- 
tions, so  that  it  is  no  wonder  we  lag  so  far  behind  our 
Sabbath-day  ideals.  In  subtle  and  unrealized  ways  all  the 
factors  of  our  environment  are  so  many  sources  of  suggestion, 
constantly  working  upon  our  minds. 

Could  we  always  command  powerful  and  inspiring  moral 
influences,  and  keep  out  of  range  of  evil  ones,  our  morals 
would  perhaps  take  care  of  themselves.  But  while  seeking 
so  far  as  possible  these  external  props,  and  if  necessary 
having  recourse  to  the  still  more  effective  help  of  the  pro- 
fessional hypnotists,  there  remains  a  vast  deal  that  we  must 
do  for  ourselves  if  we  are  to  resist  successfully  the  downward 
pull  of  evil  influences,  solve  our  own  individual  problems, 
conquer  our  own  peculiar  temptations,  and  attain  our  ideals. 
We  must  practise  auto-suggestion. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  the  loftiest  spirits  have  always  prac- 
tised it,  in  their  habit  of  daily  prayer.  For  whatever  else 
prayer  accomplishes,  it  certainly  brings  the  mind  back  to  its 
ideals,  concentrates  it  upon  them,  and,  if  sincerely  and 


280  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

earnestly  engaged  in,  is  the  best  possible  form  of  suggestion. 
The  lapse  of  this  habit  helps  to  explain  why  unbelievers 
so  often  degenerate  morally.  Comte,  that  positive  dis- 
believer in  supernatural  dogmas,  clearly  recognized  this 
danger,  and  enjoined  upon  his  followers  a  consecration 
prayer  three  times  a  day.  In  recent  years  the  writers  who 
call  their  doctrine  by  the  name  of  The  New  Thought  —  and 
other  kindred  thinkers  —  have  called  attention  to  the 
possibiUties  of  self-help,  directing  us  to  "retire  into  the 
silence,"  there  to  concentrate  our  minds  upon  those  beliefs 
that  are  comforting  and  inspiring  to  us;  and  have  helped 
many  thereby  to  attain  peace  and  self-possession.  But 
still  the  conscious  use  of  auto-suggestion  for  the  attain- 
ment of  personal  ideals  has  been  very  little  discussed,  and 
in  the  employment  of  this  great  power  we  are  astonishingly 
backward. 

A  practicable  mechanism  of  self-control. 

Let  us,  then,  outline  briefly  the  chief  points  necessary  to 
note  in  using  this  force  for  our  own  benefit. 

A  necessary  preliminary  is  to  study  our  problems,  analyze 
our  difficulties,  make  sure  exactly  what  we  want  to  do  and 
wherein  we  fail;  and  thereby  to  pin  our  aspirations  down 
to  definite  resolves  to  act  in  certain  ways  rather  than  in 
certain  other  ways.  Our  ideals  are  apt  to  be  vague  and  even 
conflicting,  or  else  so  abstract  and  general  as  to  fail  to  direct 
us  with  precision  to  any  concrete  act.  We  realize  dumbly 
that  we  are  not  what  we  should  be,  and  we  grope  for  better 
things;  but  just  wherein  the  difference  consists,  just  where  is 
the  point  where  we  go  off  the  track,  is  uncertain  in  our  minds. 
As  in  physical  achievement,  half  the  success  lies  in  applying 
the  effort  at  just  the  right  place.  The  men  who  have  accom- 
plished much  are  those  who  have  known  exactly  what  they 
wanted  to  do  and  have  concentrated  their  energies  upon 


THE  MECHANISM  OF  SELF-CONTROL  281 

that.  If  we  have  so  much  self-reformation  to  accomplish  as 
to  dissipate  our  attention,  it  may  be  wise  to  decide  which 
changes  are  most  immediately  important  and  to  limit  our 
endeavors  at  first  to  those. 

Included  in  this  preliminary  task  is  the  fixation  in  our 
minds  of  the  reasons  for  the  lines  of  conduct  we  intend  to 
follow,  all  the  motives  that  draw  us  toward  them.  This  will 
show  us  whether  we,  i.e.,  our  better  selves,  really  wish  to 
acquire  these  new  habits,  are  really  convinced  that  they  are 
right,  or  whether  we  are  merely  putting  before  ourselves 
some  one  else's  ideal  which  we  vaguely  feel  we  ought  or  are 
expected  to  follow.  One  can  often  convince  one's  self  quite 
thoroughly  of  ideas  one  did  not  really  beheve  in  by  this 
method  of  suggestion;  but  if  we  are  to  control  our  own  morals 
we  wish  to  control  them  not  by  some  one  else's  ideals  but 
by  our  own.  If  a  thing  is  really  right  to  do  there  must  be 
definite  and  legitimate  reasons  for  the  doing  which  can 
appeal  to  our  intelligence  and  our  emotions;  these  we  should 
bring  into  the  foreground  of  our  thought  and  express  as 
clearly  and  forcibly  as  possible. 

We  have  now  the  material  for  our  work.  We  must  so 
hammer  these  resolutions  and  the  motives  to  them  into  our 
heads  that  they  will  be  vividly  conscious  to  us  when  they  are 
needed.  In  this  process  there  are  three  main  points  to  be 
remembered  —  Concentration,  Iteration,  and  Assertion. 

(1)  Concentration.  The  more  completely  the  mind  can  be 
concentrated  upon  the  resolution  and  its  motives  the  deeper 
will  they  penetrate  into  it,  to  lie  there  ready  for  use  at  the 
moment  of  action.  A  definite  time  should  be  set  apart 
when  the  mind  can  be  withdrawn  from  other  thoughts  and 
compelled  to  give  all  its  attention  to  this  matter.  On  first 
waking,  or  just  before  going  to  sleep  —  if  one  is  not  too  tired 
—  one  can  usually  best  get  away  from  the  distracting  details 
of  life.   The  resolutions  should  be  written  down,  with  the 


282  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

most  important  words  or  phrases  underlined,  to  serve  as 
catchwords  and  mottoes.  They  should  be  read  aloud  and 
repeated  from  memory,  as  well  as  thought  over  silently, 
thus  adding  visual  and  auditory  images  to  the  mental  con- 
cepts. In  meditating  upon  them  one's  thoughts  should  not 
be  allowed  to  wander  too  far,  but  must  be  constantly  referred 
to  the  definite  numbered  resolutions.  The  use  of  symbols,  of 
colors,  etc.,  will  readily  occur  to  any  one  who  goes  into  this 
matter  with  Hvely  interest.  Always  repeat  the  resolutions 
with  the  greatest  possible  emphasis  and  enthusiasm,  so  as  to 
carry  them  away  ringing  in  the  mind.  Remember  that  the 
astonishing  results  of  hypnotism  and  mental  healing  are  due 
simply  to  the  complete  possession  of  the  mind  by  the  new 
idea. 

(2)  Iteration.  The  oftener  the  mind  is  fixed  upon  the 
resolution  and  its  motives,  the  more  deeply  will  they  become 
engraved  in  it.  Sometimes  one  determined  concentration 
will  cany  the  day;  but  if  this  quick  assault  does  not  win  the 
victory  a  long-continued  siege  can  do  it.  By  hammering 
away  continually  at  the  same  spot  the  requisite  impression 
will  finally  be  made.  A  momentary  rehearsal  of  the  resolu- 
tions may  be  made  a  hundred  times  a  day,  in  passing;  and 
immediately  before  the  time  for  execution,  if  it  can  be  fore- 
seen, forces  should  be  rallied,  even  if  only  by  an  instantane- 
ous flash  of  determination.  Above  all,  one  should  not  be 
discouraged  and  stop  trying;  for  every  renewed  effort,  even 
if  showing  no  reward  in  success,  produces  its  exact  and 
unfailing  effect.  Keeping  everlastingly  at  it  is  as  necessary 
for  success  in  morals  as  in  everything  else. 

(3)  Assertion.  The  more  vigorously  we  assert  our  power 
to  keep  our  resolutions  the  more  likely  we  are  to  do  so.  It  is 
largely  lack  of  confidence  in  ourselves  that  paralyzes  us.  The 
religions  have  realized  the  need  of  inspiring  hope  and  confi- 
dence in  their  converts  by  preaching  the  necessity  of  faith. 


THE  MECHANISM  OF  SELF-CONTROL 

The  faith  we  need  is  not  necessarily  faith  in  any  supernatural 
help,  but  only  in  the  demonstrated  fact  of  the  possibility  of 
controlling  our  own  minds  and  morals  by  going  at  it  in  the 
right  way.  But  we  must  not  passively  wait  for  faith  to 
possess  us,  we  must  grasp  it,  cleave  to  it,  assert  it.  We  must 
repeat  our  resolutions  always  with  the  conviction  that  we 
are  really  going  to  cany  them  out.  We  must  picture  our- 
selves at  the  time  of  temptation,  with  the  triumphant 
thought  of  how  splendidly  we  are  going  to  worst  the  Devil, 
and  never  for  a  moment  think  or  talk  of  ourselves  as  likely 
to  forget  or  yield.  Such  persistent  assertion,  even  if  there  is  a 
background  of  distrust  that  we  cannot  wholly  banish  from 
our  minds,  will  greatly  help.  Whatever  we  may  think  about 
the  ethics  of  belief  as  applied  to  supernatural  things,  the 
"will  to  believe"  in  our  own  power  is  certainly  legitimate 
and  important.^ 

Various  accessories  and  safeguards. 

The  dogged  and  hearty  practice  of  auto-suggestion, 
whether  in  the  secular  form  above  outlined,  or  in  the  warmer 
and  more  satisfying  form  of  prayer,  is  sufficient  to  keep  a 
man  master  of  himself  and  above  the  reach  of  whatever 
temptations  he  recognizes  and  chooses  to  resist.  But  there 
are  various  other  furtherances  to  self-control  that  may  be 
briefly  suggested. 

(1)  The  method  of  "turning  over  a  new  leaf"  is  of  the 
utmost  value  to  minds  of  a  certain  type.  To  declare  a 
definite  break  with  the  old  life,  a  fresh  beginning,  unstained 
and  full  of  hope,  often  gives  just  the  extra  impetus  that  was 
needed.  W^e  are  weighted  by  the  memory  of  our  failures,  we 
live  in  the  shadow  of  the  past,  and  easily  slide  into  a  hope- 

*  The  important  problem  of  the  ethics  of  belief,  as  applied  to  religious 
matters,  has  not  been  discussed  in  this  volume.  The  present  writer  hopes 
to  discuss  it  fully  in  a  later  volume,  to  be  called  Problems  of  Religion. 


284  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

lessness  and  sense  of  impotence  which  a  mere  dogged  persist- 
ence cannot  overcome.  New  Year's  Day,  a  birthday,  any 
change  in  place  or  manner  of  life,  may  well  be  made  the 
occasion  for  a  bout  of  '*  moral  house-cleaning,"  which  will 
give  a  new  enthusiasm  and  vitality  to  our  better  natures. 
The  essential  thing  in  such  cases  is  to  look  out  for  the  first 
tests,  and  not  allow  a  single  exception  to  the  new  resolutions. 
A  slight  lapse,  that  seems  inconsequential,  may  serve  to 
check  the  new  momentum;  as  La  Rochefoucauld  says,  "It  is 
far  easier  to  extinguish  a  first  desire  than  to  satisfy  all  those 
that  follow  in  its  train." 

There  is,  however,  a  real  danger  in  this  method,  of  a  dis- 
couragement and  demoralization  resulting  from  the  collapse 
of  enthusiastic  hopes.  And  there  is  the  further  danger  that 
a  man  will  excuse  indulgence  in  such  hours  of  discourage- 
ment, on  the  ground  that  he  is  going  to  turn  over  another 
new  leaf  to-morrow  and  might  as  well  have  a  good  fling 
to-day.  It  is  well  to  remember  the  truth  that  Martineau 
expressed  by  his  apt  phrase,  *'the  tides  of  the  spirit."  "But, 
alas,"  Stevenson  puts  it,  "by  planting  a  stake  at  the  top  of 
the  flood,  you  can  neither  prevent  nor  delay  the  inevitable 
ebb."  After  all,  in  most  of  our  moral  warfare,  "it's  dogged 
as  does  it."  "He  that  stumbles  and  picks  himself  up  is  as  if 
he  had  never  fallen." 

"  We  cannot  kindle  when  we  will 
The  fire  which  in  the  heart  resides; 
The  spirit  bloweth  and  is  still. 
In  mystery  our  soul  abides. 
But  tasks  in  hours  of  insight  will'd 
Can  be  through  hours  of  gloom  fulfill'd." 

If  we  do  try  the  abrupt  break,  it  is  of  the  utmost  import- 
ance to  utilize  every  opportunity  for  the  carrying  out  of  the 
new  program,  to  hunt  up  occasions  while  the  will  is  strong 
and  the  courage  high.  One  actual  fulfillment  of  a  resolution 
is  worth  many  mental  rehearsals.    And  when  the  enemy  is 


THE  MECHANISM  OF  SELF-CONTROL  285 

repulsed  by  this  charge  with  the  bayonet,  vigilance  must  not 
be  relaxed,  lest  he  return  to  take  us  unawares.^ 

(2)  It  is  an  excellent  thing  to  do  a  little  gratuitous  spirit- 
ual exercise  every  day,  just  to  keep  in  training,  to  get  the 
habit  of  conquering  impulse,  of  doing  disagreeable  things. 
Nothing  is  more  useful  to  a  man  than  that  power.  We  must 
not  let  our  lives  get  too  easy  and  our  wills  too  soft.  To  jump 
out  of  bed  when  the  whistle  blows,  instead  of  dawdling  just 
for  a  minute  more  in  indolent  comfort,  to  make  one's  self 
take  the  cold  bath  that  is  abhorrent  to  the  flesh,  to  deny 
one's  self  the  cigar  or  the  candy  that  may  not  be  in  itself 
particularly  harmful  —  by  some  means  or  other  to  keep 
one's  self  in  the  saddle  and  riding  one's  desires,  may  enable 
one  when  some  crisis  comes  to  thrust  aside  a  temptation  that 

^  I  cannot  forbear  including,  in  this  connection,  the  admirable  remarks 
of  William  James  {Psychology,  vol.  i,  pp.  123-24):  "The  first  [maxim]  is 
that  in  the  acquisition  of  a  new  habit,  or  the  leaving  off  of  an  old  one,  we 
must  take  care  to  launch  ourselves  vnth  as  strong  and  decided  an  initiafire  as 
possible.  Accumulate  all  the  possible  circumstances  which  shall  reenforce 
the  right  motives;  put  yourself  assiduously  in  conditions  that  encourage 
the  new  way;  make  engagements  incompatible  with  the  old;  take  a  public 
pledge,  if  the  case  allows;  in  short,  envelop  your  resolution  with  every  aid 
you  know.  This  will  give  your  new  beginning  such  a  momentum  that  the 
temptation  to  break  down  will  not  occur  as  soon  as  it  otherwise  might;  and 
every  day  during  which  a  breakdown  is  postponed  adds  to  the  chances  of 
its  not  occurring  at  all. 

"The  second  maxim  is:  Never  suffer  an  exception  to  occur  till  the  new  habit 
is  securely  rooted  in  your  life.  Each  lapse  is  like  the  letting  fall  of  a  ball  of 
string  which  one  is  carefully  winding  up;  a  single  slip  undoes  more  than  a 
great  many  turns  will  wind  again.  .  .  .  The  need  of  securing  success  at  the 
outset  is  imperative.  Failure  at  first  is  apt  to  dampen  the  energy  of  all 
future  attempts,  whereas  past  experience  of  success  nerves  one  to  future 
vigor.  ...  It  is  surprising  how  soon  a  desire  will  die  of  inanition  if  it  be 
never  fed. 

"A  third  maxim  may  be  added  to  the  preceding  pair:  Seize  the  very  first 
possible  opportunity  to  act  on  every  resolution  you  make,  and  on  every  emotional 
prompting  you  may  experience  in  the  direction  of  the  habits  you  aspire  to  gain. 
It  is  not  in  the  moment  of  their  forming,  but  in  the  moment  of  their  pro- 
ducing motor  effects  that  resolves  and  aspirations  communicate  the  new  'set* 
to  the  brain." 


286  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

would  master  the  man  too  fatally  accustomed  to  doing 
things  in  the  easiest  way. 

(3)  Discretion  is  sometimes  the  better  part  of  valor. 
Besides  strengthening  our  own  wills,  it  is  wise  to  seek  in 
every  way  to  remove  temptation  from  our  path,  and,  if 
need  be,  to  run  away  from  it.  We  must  keep  away  from 
situations  that  experience  warns  are  dangerous  for  us,  how- 
ever innocent  they  may  be  to  others.  If  a  man  find  that 
dancing,  or  the  theater,  arouses  his  passionate  nature,  it  may 
be  better  to  avoid  it  entirely  till  his  hypersensitive  state  is 
normalized.  Always  alcoholic  liquors  are  to  be  avoided;  they 
cloud  the  reason  and  the  will,  and  let  impulse  loose.  Always 
overexcitement  and  overfatigue  are  to  be  avoided.  "The 
power  to  overcome  temptation,"  Jane  Addams  writes, 
"  reaches  its  limit  almost  automatically  with  that  of  physical 
resistance." 

(4)  We  must  follow  Bossuet's  advice  not  to  combat 
passions  directly  so  much  as  to  turn  them  aside  by  applying 
them  to  other  objects.  Our  emotional  nature  is  a  gift  of  the 
gods;  the  sinner  might  have  been  a  saint  if  his  emotions  had 
only  been  enlisted  under  the  right  banner.  Something  good 
to  love,  to  work  for,  and  think  about,  something  that  can 
arouse  our  whole  nature  and  relieve  it  from  suppression,  is 
the  best  antidote  to  morbid  desire.  It  is  sometimes  alleged 
that  it  is  better  to  satisfy  a  passion  than  to  keep  it  pent  up 
within  the  organism.  But  satisfying  a  wrong  passion  not 
only  brings  its  inevitable  unhappy  consequences,  to  one's 
self  and  to  others,  it  makes  it  far  harder  to  resist  the  passion 
again,  when  it  recurs.  The  only  safe  outlet  is  one  that  leads 
into  right  conduct;  under  skilful  guidance  all  passions  can 
be  transmuted  into  valuable  driving  forces  and  allies  of 
morality. 

(5)  Even  if  one  seems  to  be  playing  a  losing  game,  one 
can  still  keep  up  the  fight.   One  can  spoil  one's  enjoyment 


THE  MECHANISM  OF  SELF-CONTROL  287 

in  self-indulgence  or  selfishness;  one  can  refuse  to  give  in  all 
over.  This  minority  representation  of  the  better  impulse  will 
suffice  to  keep  it  alive  in  us;  and  when  the  revulsion  from 
sin  comes  we  shall  be  in  better  shape  to  make  the  fight  next 
time.  A  hundred  failures  need  not  discourage;  some  of  the 
greatest  men  have  gained  the  final  ascendancy  over  their 
weaknesses  only  after  a  long  and  often  losing  struggle.  The 
case  is  hopeless  only  for  the  man  who  stops  fighting. 

Self-control  is  the  measure  of  manhood.  It  is  the  most 
important  thing  in  the  personal  life.  And  it  is  within  the 
reach  of  any  man  who  can  be  brought  to  understand  the 
mechanism  wherethrough  it  can  be  attained.  It  remains 
true  that  it  is  best  attained  through  religion,  which  utilizes 
the  power  of  prayer,  of  faith,  the  enthusiasm  of  a  great  cause 
and  motive,  and  the  comradeship  and  help  of  others  engaged 
in  the  same  eternal  war  with  sin.  But  religion,  to  be  effica- 
cious, must  be  not  passively  accepted,  but  used.  Its  help 
comes  not  to  him  who  saith  **Lord,  Lord!"  but  to  him  who 
earnestly  seeks  to  do  the  will  of  the  Father. 

J.  Payot,  Education  of  the  Will.  H.  C.  King,  Rational  Living, 
chap.  VI,  sec.  in;  chap.  x.  W.  James,  Psychology,  vol.  i,  pp.  122-27; 
vol.  n,  pp.  561-79.  Talks  to  Teachers,  chap.  vm.  W.  E.  H.  Lecky, 
Map  of  Life,  chap.  xii.  A.  Bain,  The  Emotions  and  the  Will,  pt.  ii, 
chap.  IX.  L.  H.  Gulick,  in  World's  Work,  vol.  15,  p.  9797.  Bossuet, 
Connaissance  de  Dieu  et  de  Soi-meme,  chap,  in,  sec.  19.  St.  Augus- 
tine, Confessions,  bk.  viii,  chap.  v.  Janet,  Elements  de  Morale, 
chap.  X,  sec.  3.  W.  L.  Sheldon,  An  Ethical  Movement,  chap.  x. 
A.  Bennett,  The  Human  Machine,  chaps,  i-v.  O.  S.  Marden,  Every 
Man  a  King.  P.  Dubois,  L'Education  de  Soi-Meme.  J.  J.  Putnam 
and  others,  Psychotherapeutics,  chap.  x.   Forums  vol.  52,  p.  726. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

THE  ATTAINABILITY  OF  HAPPINESS 

We  have  now  discussed  the  more  recurrent  problems  of  the 
individual,  and  pointed  out  the  salient  duties  that  private 
life  entails.  But  there  remains  something  to  be  added  before 
we  shall  have  clearly  pointed  the  way  to  personal  happiness. 
"Mere  morality,"  even  when  coupled  with  good  fortune,  is 
not  enough;  a  sinless  man,  scrupulous  to  fulfill  the  least 
command  of  the  law,  may  yet  be  anxious,  restless,  depressed, 
unsatisfied.  We  need  more  than  morality,  as  the  word  is 
commonly  used;  we  need  religion  —  or  something  of  the 
sort.  There  is  no  doubt  that  for  the  attainment  of  a  per- 
vasive and  stable  happiness  there  is  nothing  so  good  as  the 
best  sort  of  religion;  but,  as  in  discussing  self-control,  we 
must  here  steer  clear  of  religious  controversy  and  phrase 
what  we  have  to  say  in  the  colder  terms  of  "mere  morality." 
And  though  there  will  be  a  great  loss  in  feeling,  in  persuasive- 
ness and  unction  thereby,  there  will  be  gain  in  clearness.  It 
is  possible  to  express  in  the  drab  tones  of  morality  the  pro- 
found insights  which  have  made  religion  the  great  guide  to 
happiness;  and  even  the  man  who  deems  himself  irreligious 
may,  if  he  takes  to  heart  these  more  prosaic  counsels,  find 
something  of  the  peace  that  has  been  the  boon  of  true 
believers. 

The  threefold  key  to  happiness: 

/.  Hearty  allegiance  to  duty.  The  one  thing  above  all 
others  that  makes  life  worth  living  is  the  utter  devotion  of 
the  heart  and  will  to  the  commands  of  morality.  To  throw 


THE  ATTAINABILITY  OF  HAPPINESS  289 

one's  self  whole-heartedly  into  the  game,  to  play  one's  part 
for  all  it  is  worth,  transforms  what  were  else  a  grim  and 
unhappy  necessity  into  a  glorious  opportunity.  The  happy 
man  is  the  loyal  man,  the  man  who  has  taken  sides,  who  has 
enrolled  himself  definitely  on  the  side  of  right  and  tastes  the 
zest  of  battle.  He  has  something  to  live  for,  and  something 
lasting.  He  has  put  his  heart  into  a  cause  that  the  limita- 
tions and  accidents  of  life  cannot  take  from  him,  he  has  laid 
up  his  treasure  in  heaven,  where  moth  and  rust  doth  not 
corrupt  or  thieves  break  through  and  steal. 

Any  cause,  any  ambition,  any  great  endeavor  that  can 
stir  the  blood,  and  give  a  life  direction,  purpose,  and  con- 
tinuity of  achievement,  has  the  power  to  rescue  life  from 
ennui,  from  emptiness,  and  give  it  positive  worth.  But  most 
ambitions  pall  in  time,  and  many  a  cause  that  has  taken  a 
man's  best  energies  has  come  to  seem  mistaken  or  futile 
with  the  years.  There  is  only  one  great  campaign  which  is 
so  eternal,  so  surely  necessary,  so  clear  in  its  summons  to 
all  men,  that  the  heart  can  rest  in  it  as  in  something  great 
enough  to  ennoble  a  whole  life.  That  is  the  age-long  war 
against  evil,  the  unending  summons  to  duty,  the  service  of 
God.  Once  a  man  learns  this  deepest  of  joys,  nothing  can 
take  it  from  him;  whatever  his  limitations,  however  narrow 
his  sphere,  there  will  not  fail  to  be  a  right  way,  a  brave  way, 
a  beautiful  way  to  live.  There  is  comradeship  in  it;  in  this 
common  service  of  God  —  or  of  good,  if  we  must  avoid  reli- 
gious terms  —  we  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  the  saints 
and  heroes  of  all  races  and  times,  with  all,  of  whatever  land 
or  tongue,  who  are  striving  to  push  forward  the  line,  to  make 
the  right  prevail  and  banish  evil.  Every  effort,  every  sacri- 
fice, has  its  inextinguishable  effect;  in  his  moral  conquests  a 
man  is  no  longer  an  individual,  he  is  a  part  of  the  great  tide 
that  is  resistlessly  making  toward  the  better  world  of  the 
future,  the  Kingdom  of  God«  The  great  Power  in  the  world 


290  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

that  makes  for  righteousness  is  back  of  him,  and  in  him; 
in  no  loyal  moment  is  he  alone.  .  .  .  Inevitably  the  tongue 
slips  into  religious  language  in  dealing  with  these  high  truths; 
but  none  the  less  are  they  scientifio  truths,  matters  of  plain 
every  day  observation. 

The  essential  point  is,  that  it  is  not  enough  to  obey  the 
I^aw;  we  must  espouse  the  Law,  clasp  it  to  our  bosoms,  love 
it,  and  give  ourselves  to  it  utterly.  We  must  —  to  use  the 
pregnant  words  of  James  —  "base  our  lives  on  doing  and 
being,  not  on  having";  base  our  lives  solidly  upon  it,  so  that 
everything  else  is  secondary.  The  pleasures  of  life  are  well 
enough  in  their  time,  but  they  must  not  usurp  the  chief 
place  in  a  man's  thought.^  His  first  concern  must  be  to  keep 
true,  to  play  the  game;  he  must  seek  first  the  Kingdom  of 
God  and  His  righteousness,  if  he  would  have  these  other 
things  added  unto  him.  He  must  lose  his  life  —  his  worldly 
interests,  his  dependence  upon  ease  and  luxury,  and  even 
love  —  if  he  would  truly  find  it.  In  a  hundred  such  phrases 
from  the  Great  Teacher's  lips  one  finds  the  secret.  More 
baldly  expressed,  it  comes  to  this,  that  only  through  putting 
the  main  emphasis  upon  doing  the  right,  obeying  the  call  of 
duty,  only  through  the  courageous  attack  and  the  giving 
of  our  utmost  allegiance,  can  we  keep  a  positive  zest  in 
hving,  exorcise  the  spectre  of  aimlessness  and  depression,  and 
lift  ordinary  commonplace  life  to  the  level  of  heroism. 
Blessed  is  the  man  whose  delight  is  in  the  law  of  the  Lord. 

//.  Hearty  acquiescence  in  our  lot.  The  fighter,  for  what- 
ever cause,  can  bear  the  blows  that  come  as  a  part  of  the 
battle;  if  a  man  has  put  his  heart  into  living  by  his  ideal,  he 
is  immune  from  the  disappointments  and  irritations  that 

*  Cf.  J.  S.  Mill,  Autobiography,  p.  142:  "The  enjoyments  of  life  are 
suflBcient  to  make  it  a  pleasant  thing,  when  they  are  taken  en  passant,  with- 
out being  made  a  principal  object.  .  .  .  The  only  chance  is  to  treat,  not 
happiness,  but  some  end  external  to  it,  as  the  purpose  of  life." 


THE  ATTAINABILITY  OF  HAPPINESS  291 

beset  man  upon  a  lower  level.  But  it  is  well  to  take  thought 
also  for  this  side  of  the  matter,  to  cultivate  deliberately  the 
spirit  of  acquiescence  in  the  inevitable  pain  and  losses  of 
life.  Many  of  the  sweetest  pleasures  are  by  their  nature 
uncertain  or  transient;  these  we  must  hold  so  loosely  that, 
while  not  refusing  to  enjoy  their  sweetness,  we  are  not 
dependent  upon  them  and  can  let  them  go  without  losing 
sight  of  the  steady  gleam  that  we  follow.  However  dear  to 
us  are  the  people  we  love,  and  the  material  things  we  own, 
we  must  keep  the  underlying  assurance  that  if  they  be  taken 
from  us  life  will  still  bring  us  in  other  ways  renewed  oppor- 
tunities for  that  loyalty  to  duty,  that  faithful  living,  which 
is  after  all  the  end  for  which  we  live.  We  must  count  what- 
ever comes  to  us,  whether  sweet  or  bitter,  as  the  conditions 
under  which  we  serve,  the  material  with  which  we  have  to 
work,  the  stuff  which  we  have  to  "try  the  soul's  strength 
on.*'  For  there  is  no  way  to  be  armor-proof  against  unhappi- 
ness  but  by  seeing  to  it  that  our  hearts  are  not  set  on  any- 
thing but  doing  or  being;  nothing  else  is  reliably  permanent 
amid  the  fitful  sunshine  and  shadow  of  human  life.  "Make 
thy  claim  of  wages  a  zero;  then  hast  thou  the  world  at  thy 
feet."  1 

This  necessity  of  detaching  the  heart  from  dependence 
upon  uncertainties  found  extreme  expression  in  the  various 
historic  forms  of  asceticism  and  monasticism.  Such  a 
running  away  from  the  world  does  not  satisfy  our  age,  with 
its  eagerness  for  life  and  life  more  abundantly;  if  it  escapes 
the  poignant  sorrows  it  cannot  bring  the  richest  and  fullest 

*  In  Maeterlinck's  Measure  of  the  Hours,  he  speaks  of  a  snndlal  found 
near  Venice  by  Hazlitt  with  the  inscription.  Haras  non  numero  nisi  serenas 
—  and  quotes  Hazlitt's  remarks  thereon:  "  What  a  fine  lesson  is  conveyed 
to  the  mind  to  take  no  note  of  time  but  by  its  benefits,  to  watch  only  for 
the  smiles  and  neglect  the  frowns  of  fate,  to  compose  our  lives  of  bright  and 
gentle  moments,  turning  always  to  the  sunny  side  of  things  and  letting  the 
rest  slip  from  our  imaginations,  unheeded  or  forgotten." 


292  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

happiness,  or  make  life  better  for  others.  But  we  may  well 
take  to  heart  the  half-truth  taught  by  the  hermits  and  monks 
of  the  past.  We  may  be  "in  the  world,'*  indeed,  but  not 
"  of  it " ;  we,  too,  may  make  no  claims  upon  life,  while  putting 
our  hearts  into  playing  our  own  part  in  it  well. 

The  writings  of  Epictetus  and  Marcus  Aurelius  are  full  of 
passages  that  express  the  gist  of  the  matter,  such  as  the 
following:  "It  is  thy  duty  to  order  thy  life  well  in  every 
single  act;  and  if  every  act  does  its  duty  as  far  as  is  possible, 
be  content;  no  one  is  able  to  hinder  thee  so  that  each  act 
shall  not  do  its  duty.  But  something  external  will  stand  in 
the  way?  Nothing  will  stand  in  the  way  of  thy  acting  justly 
and  soberly  and  considerately.  But  perhaps  some  of  thy 
active  powers  will  be  hindered?  Well,  by  acquiescing  in  the 
hindrance,  and  being  content  to  transfer  thy  efforts  to  that 
which  is  allowed,  another  opportunity  of  action  is  immedi- 
ately put  before  thee  in  place  of  that  which  was  hindered.'* 
What  is  this  but  saying  in  other  words  that  not  in  having  lies 
our  life,  but  in  doing  and  being. 

Not  even  in  succeeding,  we  must  remember;  and  this  is 
perhaps  the  hardest  part  of  our  lesson.  It  is  one  thing  to 
bear  with  serenity  those  blows  of  fortune  against  which  we 
are  obviously  defenseless;  it  is  another  thing,  when  there 
seems  a  chance  for  averting  the  disaster,  when  our  whole 
heart  and  soul  are  thrown  into  that  effort,  to  await  the  out- 
come with  tranquillity,  to  bear  failure  without  complaint. 
The  "might  have  been*s**  and  the  "perhaps  may  yet  be*s'* 
are  the  greatest  disturbers  of  our  peace.  To  use  our  keenest 
wits  for  attaining  what  seems  best,  to  use  our  utmost  per- 
suasion for  protecting  ourselves  from  the  selfishness  and 
stupidity  of  others,  and  then  if  we  fail,  if  the  fair  hop>e  slips 
from  our  grasp,  if  the  thoughtlessness  or  cruelty  of  men  pre- 
vails against  us,  to  smile  and  attack  the  next  problem  with 
undaunted  cheerfulness,  requires,  indeed,  a  touch  of  heroism; 


THE  ATTAINABILITY  OF  HAPHNESS  29S 

and  the  failure  to  attain  to  that  level  may  well  be  called 
"the  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds.  '*  For  the  very  concentra- 
tion of  life  upon  doing  and  being  carries  with  it  the  danger  of 
staking  happiness  upon  the  success  of  the  doing,  the  attain- 
ment of  the  ideals.  We  must  count  even  the  stupidity  and 
impulsiveness  of  our  own  mental  make-up  as  among  the 
materials  we  have  to  work  with,  and  not  allow  remorse  for 
our  own  part  in  past  failures  to  interfere  with  the  joyful 
earnestness  with  which  we  attack  the  problems  of  the  eternal 
present.  We  may,  indeed,  often  succeed,  and  that  may  be  a 
very  great  and  pure  joy  to  us;  but  we  are  not  to  count  upon 
success;  or,  to  put  it  another  way,  we  are  to  think  of  the  real 
success  as  lying  in  the  dauntless  renewal  of  the  effort  rather 
than  in  the  show  of  outward  result.  "To  have  often  resisted 
the  diabolic,  and  at  the  end  to  be  still  resisting  it,  is  for  the 
poor  human  soldier  to  have  done  right  well.  To  ask  to  see 
some  fruit  of  our  endeavor  is  but  a  transcendental  way  of 
serving  for  reward." 

This  is  not  pessimism,  it  is  the  first  step  toward  a  sound 
and  invulnerable  optimism.  We  must  recognize  once  for  all 
that  this  world  is  not  the  world  of  our  dreams,  and  cease  to 
be  so  pathetically  surprised  and  hurt  when  it  falls  short  of 
them.  Were  we  to  be  rebellious  at  life  for  not  being  built 
after  the  pattern  of  our  ideals  there  would  be  no  limit  to  our 
fault-finding.  We  may,  indeed,  long  in  our  idle  hours  with 
Omar 

*'To  grasp  this  sorry  scheme  of  things  entire, 
.  .  .  shatter  it  to  bits  —  and  then 
Remould  it  nearer  to  the  heart's  desire!" 

But  in  our  daily  life  a  braver  and  saner  attitude  befits  us; 
for  it  is  not  in  such  an  ideal  world  but  in  the  actual  world 
that  we  have  to  live.  Evils  there  are  in  it  and  will  yet  be  — 
why  we  cannot  tell  and  need  not  know;  the  only  alternative 
we  have  is  to  take  them  cheerfully  or  gloomily,  to  rebel  or  to 


294  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

ax^cept  the  situation.  Our  duty  then  is  clear.  To  face  the 
events  of  life  as  they  come  to  us,  without  discouragement  or 
dismay,  to  laugh  at  them  a  little  and  learn  to  carry  on  our 
lives  through  them  with  steadfast  heart  and  smiling  face  — 
surely  that  is  the  part  of  wisdom  and  of  true  manliness, 
i  The  ugly  things  in  life  seem  much  less  formidable  when 
thus  boldly  faced  than  when  we  try  to  shut  our  eyes  to 
them,  with  the  consequent  disillusion  at  their  continual 
reappearance.  Confess  frankly  the  faults  of  life  and  it 
becomes  tolerable,  is  even  in  a  fair  way  to  become  lovable. 
For  after  all,  when  its  obvious  imperfections  do  not  blind  us 
to  its  good  points,  it  is  a  dear  old  world  we  live  in,  and  the 
healthy-minded  man  loves  it,  as  he  loves  his  friends  in  spite  of 
their  faults  —  loves  it,  and  finds  it  a  world  gloriously  worth 
living  in. 

///.  Hearty  appreciation  of  the  wonder  and  beauty  in  life. 
Finally,  when  we  have  our  great  purpose  in  life,  and  have 
overcome  the  fear  of  pain  and  loss,  we  must  learn  to  see  and 
appreciate  the  beauty  of  the  world  we  live  in.  The  man  who 
refuses  to  be  downed  by  trouble  is  in  a  condition  to  enjoy 
each  bit  of  good  fortune  that  comes  to  him,  to  welcome  each 
as  a  pure  gift  or  addition  to  life,  and  to  know  that  gifts  of 
some  sort  or  other  will  always  come.  Holding  all  things 
with  that  looser  grasp  that  is  ready  to  let  them  go  if  go  they 
must,  he  can  relish  the  good  things  of  life  the  more  freely  for 
not  having  counted  on  them,  as  he  can  the  more  freely  admire 
the  virtues  of  his  friends  for  not  having  expected  them  to  be 
perfect.  He  can  feel  the  beauty  of  the  world  without  being 
dependent  upon  it,  not  looking  for  mortal  things  to  be 
immortal  or  human  things  to  be  ideal,  but  whole-heartedly 
enjoying  to-day  what  he  has  to-day  and  to-morrow  what  he 
shall  have  to-morrow.  The  things  he  cannot  have  at  all, 
instead  of  spoiling  his  happiness  in  what  he  has,  will  rather 
add  to  it  by  forming  another  dimension  of  existence,  an  ideal 


THE  ATTAINABILITY  OF  HAPPINESS  295 

world  beyond  the  actual,  full  of  beautiful  visions  and  glorious 
possibilities.  And  meantime  the  real  world,  of  events  that 
actually  occur,  will  not  fail,  in  spite  of  its  flaws  and  rebuffs, 
to  bring  him  ever  fresh  delights. 

Let  no  one  minimize  these  delights.  There  is  more  beauty, 
more  interest  here  in  this  mundane  existence  of  ours,  more 
inspiration,  more  inexhaustible  possibility  of  enjoyment 
than  the  keenest  of  us  has  dreamed  of.  We  need  some  sort 
of  shaking-up  to  rouse  us  to  the  beauty  of  common  things 
—  the  freshness  of  the  air  we  breathe,  the  warmth  of  sun- 
shine, the  green  of  trees  and  fields  and  the  blue  of  the  sky, 
the  joy  in  exercise  of  brain  and  muscle,  in  reading  and  talk- 
ing and  sharing  in  the  life  of  the  world;  and  in  such  daily 
things  as  eating  at  the  family  table  when  we  are  hungry,  or 
a  good  night's  sleep  when  we  are  tired.  We  need  some  teacher 
like  Whitman  to  open  our  eyes  to  the  beauty  not  only  of 
flowers  but  of  leaves  of  grass,  to  the  picturesqueness  and 
significance  of  so  dull  a  thing  as  a  ferryboat;  or  like  Words- 
worth, with  his  picturing  of  homely  country  scenes  and 
events,  with  his  emotion  at  the  sight  of  the  sleeping  city  — • 
'*a  sight  so  touching  in  its  majesty." 

This  sense  of  the  meaning  of  common  things  floods  most 
of  us  at  one  time  or  another,  and  we  see  what  in  our  blind- 
ness we  have  been  overlooking.  Go  without  your  comfort- 
able bed  for  a  while,  your  well-cooked  food,  your  home, 
friends,  neighbors,  and  you  will  discover  how  rich  you  have 
been.  Your  mother's  face  hinted  by  some  stranger  in  a 
foreign  land  will  some  day  overcome  you  with  the  realization 
of  the  comfort  of  her  love;  and  unless  you  are  a  crabbed 
egotist  the  life  of  your  fellows  can  furnish  you  with  endless 
pleasures.  It  is  not  necessary  to  own  things  to  enjoy  them; 
our  interests  and  enjoyments  may  well  overlap  and  include 
those  of  our  friends  and  neighbors,  and  even  those  of 
strangers.   The  smile  of  a  happy  child,  a  friend's  good  for- 


296  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

tune,  a  sunrise  or  moonlit  cloud-strewn  sky,  should  bring  a 

pure  gladness  to  any  one  who  has  eyes  to  see  and  heart  to 

feel.  We  must 

"Learn  to  love  the  mom. 
Love  the  lovely  working  light. 
Love  the  miracle  of  sight. 
Love  the  thousand  things  to  do."  * 

The  true  lover  of  beauty  will  not  need  to  seek  forever  new 
scenes  and  objects  to  admire.  He  will  find  that  which  can 
feed  his  heart  in  the  clouds  of  morning,  the  blue  of  noon,  or 
the  stars  of  night.  One  graceful  vase  with  a  flower-stalk 
bending  over  to  display  its  drooping  blossoms,  will  fill  him 
with  a  quiet  happiness;  the  merry  laughter  of  a  child,  the 
tender  smile  of  a  lover,  the  rugged  features  of  a  weather- 
beaten  laborer,  will  stir  his  soul  to  response;  a  few  Hues  of 
poetry  remembered  in  the  midst  of  work,  a  simple  song  sung 
in  the  twilight,  a  print  of  some  old  master  hanging  by  his 
bedside,  a  bird-call  heard  at  sunset  or  the  scent  of  evening 
air  after  rain,  may  so  speak  to  his  spirit  that  he  will  say, 
**It  is  enough! "  It  is  not  the  number  of  beautiful  things 
that  we  have  that  matters,  but  the  degree  in  which  we  are 
open  to  their  influence,  the  atmosphere  into  which  we  let 
them  lead  us.  Our  hearts  must  be  free  from  self-seeking, 
from  regret,  from  anger,  from  restlessness.  The  vision  comes 
not  always  to  the  connoisseur,  not  always  even  to  the  artist; 

^  These  lines  are  Richard  Le  Gallienne's.    Cf.  also  Matthew  Arnold's 
lines:  — 

"  Is  it  80  small  a  thing 
To  have  enjoyed  the  sun, 
To  have  lived  light  in  the  spring. 
To  have  loved,  to  have  thought,  to  have  done. 
To  have  advanced  true  friends  and  beat  down  baffling  foes? 

"The  sports  of  the  country  people, 
A  flute  note  from  the  woods, 
Sunset  over  the  sea; 
Seed-time  and  harvest. 
The  reapers  in  the  corn. 
The  vinedresser  in  his  vineyard. 
The  village  girl  at  her  wheel.  .  .  o" 


THE  ATTAINABILITY  OF  HAPPINESS  297 

it  comes  to  him  whose  Hfe  is  simple,  earnest,  open-eyed  and 
open-hearted.  In  the  pauses  of  his  faithful  work  he  will 
refresh  his  soul  with  some  bit  of  beauty  that  tells  of  attain- 
ment, of  peace,  of  perfection.  That  is  a  proof  to  him  of  the 
beauty  in  the  midst  of  which  he  lives,  inexhaustible,  hardly 
discerned;  it  carries  him  beyond  itself  into  the  ideal  world  of 
which  it  is  a  sample  and  illustration;  unconsciously  during 
the  duties  of  the  day  he  lives  in  the  light  of  that  vision,  and 
everything  is  sweetened  and  blessed  thereby. 

Can  we  maintain  a  steady  underglow  of  happiness? 

Happiness  —  happiness  sufficient  to  make  life  well  worth 
living  —  is,  for  most  men  at  least,  at  most  times,  a  real 
possibility.  To  be  won  it  has  but  to  be  sought  vigorously 
enough.  It  is  to  be  sought,  however,  not  primarily  by  chang- 
ing one's  environment  but  by  changing  one's  self;  not  by 
acquiring  new  things,  but  by  acquiring  a  new  attitude  toward 
things;  not  by  getting  what  could  make  one  happy,  but  by 
learning  to  be  happy  with  what  one  can  get.  The  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  is  within  you  ! 

This  is  not  merely  a  moralist's  theory,  or  an  empirical 
observation;  it  is  a  scientific  fact.  We  may  restate  the  mat- 
ter in  psychological  language  by  saying  that  happiness  and 
unhappiness  are  responses  of  the  organism  to  its  environ- 
ment, reactions  upon  a  stimulus,  our  attitude  of  welcome  or 
dissatisfaction  toward  the  various  matters  of  our  experience. 
True,  we  often  think  of  the  quality  of  pleasantness  as 
inliering  in  the  things  we  enjoy,  and  speak  of  troubles  and 
sorrows  as  objective.  But  this  is  only  a  shorthand  way  of 
describing  experience.  In  reality  the  pleasure  we  feel  in 
eating  when  we  are  hungry  or  in  seeing  a  friend  we  love  is 
something  added  to  and  different  from  the  taste  sensations, 
or  the  complex  visual  perceptions  and  memory  images  the 
friend  arouses  in  us.  So  a  cutting  or  burning  sensation,  the 


208  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

thought  of  a  friend's  death,  or  of  our  failure,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  our  unhappiness  thereat  on  the  other  hand,  are  two 
distinct  things,  closely  bound  together  in  our  minds  but 
separable. 

The  separation  is,  indeed,  difficult  to  bring  about,  because 
the  age-long  struggle  for  existence  has  made  unhappiness 
at  physical  pain  and  pleasure  at  the  healthy  exercise  of  our 
organs  or  satisfying  of  our  appetite  instinctive  and  immedi- 
ate, that  we  may  avoid  what  is  harmful  to  life  and  pursue 
what  is  useful.  All  our  cravings  and  longings  and  regrets 
have  this  biological  value;  they  are  the  machinery  by  which 
nature  spurs  us  on  to  better  adjustment  to  the  conditions  of 
life.  And  in  learning  to  do  without  the  spur  we  must  learn 
not  to  need  it.  Discontent  is  better  than  laziness,  remorse 
better  than  callous  selfishness,  suffering  under  extreme  cold 
better  than  recklessly  exposing  the  body  till  it  is  weakened. 
But  as  soon  as  we  have  reached  that  stage  of  rationality 
where  we  can  choose  the  better  way  and  stick  to  it  without 
the  stinging  goad  of  pain,  the  pain  is  no  longer  necessary 
and  we  may  safely  leam  to  weed  it  out. 

A  few  blessed  souls  we  know  who  have  learned  the  secret, 
who  go  about  with  perpetually  radiant  face  and  take  smil- 
ingly the  very  mishaps  that  worry  and  sadden  the  rest  of  us. 
To  some  extent  this  may  be  merely  a  matter  of  better  nerves, 
of  less  sensitive  temperament,  of  more  abounding  vitality; 
but  there  are  many  of  the  weakest  and  most  sensitive  among 
those  who  have  learned  that  better  way;  they  can  turn  every- 
thing into  happiness  as  Midas  turned  everything  into  gold. 
It  is  surprising,  looking  through  such  a  one's  eyes,  to  see  how 
full  life  is  of  delight.  Yet  in  the  same  situations  there  may  be 
room  for  endless  complaint  if  "every  giief  is  entertained 
that's  offered."  It  all  depends  on  the  attitude  taken.  In 
trouble  one  man  will  fall  to  fretting,  while  another  does 
what  can  be  done  and  then  turns  his  thoughts  to  something 


THE  ATTAINABILITY  OF  HAPPINESS  299 

else;  in  discomfort  one  wUl  lower  the  comers  of  his  mouth 
and  feel  wretched,  while  the  other  finds  it  all  vastly  amusing; 
one  will  have  his  day  quite  spoiled  by  some  disappointment 
which  the  other  takes  as  a  mere  incident;  one  will  find  the 
same  environment  dull  and  stupid  which  the  other  finds  full 
of  interest  and  opportunity;  and  so  out  of  like  conditions  one 
will  make  an  unhappy,  the  other  a  happy  life.^ 

This,  then,  is  the  philosophy  of  happiness  in  a  nutshell: 
Put  your  heart  into  doing  your  duty;  demand  nothing  else  oj 
life  than  the  opportunity  to  do  your  duty;  enjoy  freely  and  vnth- 
outfear  everything  good  and  beautiful  that  comes  in  your  way. 

To  acquire  and  keep  this  attitude  of  mind  requires  of 
course  resolution  and  persistence.  We  must  rouse  ourselves 
and  take  sides.  We  must  definitely  pledge  ourselves  once 
and  for  all  to  happiness;  and  if  we  cannot  at  a  leap  attain 
to  it,  we  must  still  remember  that  we  have  committed  our- 
selves to  that  side.  We  must  pretend  to  be  happy,  throw 
aside  all  complainings  and  sighs  and  long  faces;  whatever 
comes,  we  must  remember  that  we  are  on  trial  to  preserve 
our  buoyancy,  our  power  not  to  be  downcast.  We  shall  not 
be  able  to  disuse  our  habit  of  unhappiness  at  once.  But  if 
we  stick  to  our  colors  and  refuse  to  add  to  whatever  depres- 
sion masters  us  by  brooding  upon  it  and  giving  it  right  of 
way;  if  we  remember  the  conditions  of  happiness  stated 

*  Cf .  "  In  joumeyings  often,  in  perils  of  waters,  in  perils  of  robbers,  in 
perils  by  mine  own  countrymen,  in  perils  by  the  heathen,  in  perils  in  the 
city,  in  perils  in  the  wilderness,  in  perils  in  the  sea,  in  perils  among  false 
brethren,  in  weariness  and  painfulness,  in  watchings  often,  in  hunger  and 
thirst,  in  fastings  often,  in  cold  and  nakedness  .  .  .  yet  always  rejoicing!" 
"Rejoicing  in  tribulation"  even,  because  to  the  brave  man  every  obstacle 
and  failure  is  so  much  furi:her  opportunity  for  courage  and  contrivance,  for 
matching  himself  against  things.  "Human  joy,"  writes  the  author  of  the 
Simple  Life,  "has  celebrated  its  finest  triumphs  under  the  greatest  tests  of 
endurance."  The  Apostle  Paul  is  but  one  of  many  who  have  welcomed  each 
rebuff,  and  proved  that  if  rightly  taken  life  almost  at  its  worst  can  be  trans- 
uuted  by  courage  into  happiness. 


300  PERSONAL  MORALITY 

above,  and  thrust  resolutely  from  us  all  thoughts  and  words 
incompatible  with  living  according  to  them,  the  unhappi- 
ness  will  be  gone  before  we  know  it.  It  is  a  well-known  psycho- 
logical law  that  if  we  choke  the  expression  of  an  emotion, 
we  shall  presently  find  that  we  have  smothered  the  emotion 
itself.  It  may  seem  Uke  hollow  pretense  at  first,  but  it  will 
pay  to  pretend  hard;  when  we  have  pretended  long  enough, 
we  shall  find  we  no  longer  need  to  pretend.  There  will 
always  be  those,  no  doubt,  who  will  declare  it  impossible, 
and  they  will  continue  to  be  unhappy;  there  will  be  many 
others  who  will  concede  the  possibility  of  it,  but  will  not 
have  the  determination  and  persistence  to  effect  it;  but  there 
will  always  be  some  who  will  say,  "Happiness  is  possible!" 
who  will  set  out  to  get  it,  and  who  will  get  it,  as  they  will 
deserve  to.  Some  men  are  born  happy,  some  seem  to  have 
happiness  thrust  upon  them,  but  some  achieve  happiness. 

It  will  not  be  the  same  kind  of  happiness  that  we  had  a^ 
children,  before  the  shocks  of  life  awoke  us.  It  will  be  a 
happiness  that  meets  and  rises  above  pain.  Life  will  always 
have  its  tragedies,  sickness  and  separation,  pain  and  sudden 
death.  They  are  the  common  inheritance  of  mankind.  But 
it  is  not  these  things  in  themselves  that  make  life  unendur- 
able, it  is  the  way  we  take  them,  our  fear  of  them,  our  worry 
over  them,  our  longings  and  rebelliousness,  our  magnifying 
and  brooding  over  and  shrinking  from  them;  when  we  resolve 
to  lift  our  heads  and  assert  our  power,  we  shall  find  life 
tragic,  yes,  but  endurable,  and  full  of  a  deep  joy.  The  little 
worries  and  disappointments  will  cease  to  trouble  us.  And 
the  same  attitude  that  enables  us  to  rise  above  them  will, 
when  more  staunchly  held,  lift  us  over  the  great  sorrows 
also,  and  keep  alive  in  us  an  underglow  of  joy. 

An  underglow  of  joy  —  that  is  what  can  be  found  in  life 
in  any  but  its  highly  abnormal  phases,  by  conforming  to  its 
conditions  and  taking  it  for  what  it  is,  the  arena  for  our 


THE  ATTAINABILITY  OF  HAPPINESS  301 

activity,  the  stuff  which  we  have  to  shape  into  service  to  the 

ideal.   It  should  be  recognized  as  the  final  word  of  personal 

morality  that  a  man  must  train  himself  to  a  happiness  that 

is  independent  of  circumstances.    We  need  no  mystical 

painting  out  of  the  shadows,  no  bUndness  to  facts,  only  a 

will  to  serve  the  right,  a  readiness  to  accept  the  imperfect, 

and  eyes  to  see  the  beauty  that  surrounds  us. 

**  If  I  have  faltered  more  or  less 
In  my  great  task  of  happiness. 
If  I  have  moved  among  my  race 
And  shown  no  glorious  morning  face. 
If  beams  from  happy  human  eyes 
Have  moved  me  not;  if  morning  skies. 
Books,  and  my  food,  and  sunmier  rain. 
Knocked  on  my  sullen  heart  in  vain.  .  .  ." 

If,  in  short,  we  have  not  disciplined  ourselves  to  happiness, 
it  may  well  be  maintained  that  we  have  left  undone  our 
highest  duty  to  our  neighbor  and  ourselves.  And  he  may 
with  good  reason  declare  that  he  has  solved  the  greatest 
problem  of  life  who  can  proclaim  with  Tolstoy,  "I  rejoice 
in  having  taught  myself  not  to  be  sad !"  or  with  the  Apostle 
Paul,  "  I  have  learned  in  whatsoever  state  I  am  therein  to  be 
content." 

Much  of  the  secret  of  happiness  is  to  be  found  in  Epictetus  and 
Marcus  Aurelius  —  and,  of  course,  in  the  Gospels.  Of  modern 
writers,  among  the  most  useful  are  Stevenson  and  Chesterton.  See, 
for  example,  Stevenson's  Christmas  Sermon,  and  J.  F.  Genung's 
Stevenson's  Attitude  toward  Life.  Chesterton's  counsels  are  too 
scattered  to  make  reference  practicable. 

See  also  C.  W.  Eliot,  The  Happy  Life.  C.  Hilty,  Happiness. 
P.  G.  Hamerton,  The  Quest  of  Happiness.  F.  Paulsen,  System  of 
Ethics,  bk.  ni,  chap,  ii,  sees.  3,  6;  chap,  iv,  sees.  1,  2.  H.  C.  King, 
Rational  Living,  chap,  x,  sec.  iv.  J.  Payot,  Education  of  the  Will, 
bk.  rv,  chap.  iv.  A.  Bennett,  The  Human  Machine,  chaps,  vi, 
VII ;  Mental  Efficiency,  chap.  ix.  In  Royce's  Philosophy  of  Loy- 
alty, Roosevelt's  Strenuous  Life,  and  Gannett's  Blessed  he  Drudg- 
-ery,  we  get  valuable  notes;  and  Carlyle  has  many,  especially  in 
ihe  latter  chapters  of  Sartor  Resartua, 


PART  IV 

PUBLIC  MOKALITY 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

PATRIOTISM  AND  WORLD-PEACE 

The  goal  of  personal  morality  is  reached  with  the  adop- 
tion of  that  mode  of  life  that  leads  to  the  stable  and  lasting 
happiness  of  the  individual.  Such  a  happiness  necessarily 
presupposes  relations  of  kindness  and  cooperation  with 
those  other  persons  that  form  the  immediate  environment. 
But  it  is  quite  compatible  with  a  neglect  of  those  wider 
aspects  of  duty  that  we  call  public  morality.  The  Stoics, 
the  anchorites,  some  communities  of  monks,  and  many  a 
well-to-do  recluse  to-day,  are  examples  of  those  who  have 
found  a  selfish  happiness  for  themselves  without  taking  any 
hand  in  forwarding  the  general  welfare.  Yet  the  greatest 
total  good  is  not  to  be  attained  in  any  such  way;  if  man  is  to 
win  in  his  inexorable  war  with  a  hostile  and  grudging  environ- 
ment, men  must  march  en  masse,  must  work  for  ends  that 
lie  far  beyond  their  personal  satisfactions,  for  the  welfare 
of  the  State  and  posterity.  It  is  these  larger,  public  duties 
that  we  must  now  consider.  And  it  is  here  that  our  greatest 
stress  must  be  laid;  for  these  obligations  are  too  easily  over- 
looked, and  toward  them  the  contemporary  conscience 
needs  most  sharply  to  be  aroused. 

The  first  great  public  problem,  historically,  is  that  of  war. 
And  theoretically  it  may  well  come  first,  since  the  attain- 
ment of  peace  is  the  prerequisite  of  all  other  social  advance. 
While  a  nation's  energies  are  absorbed  in  war,  nothing,  or 
nearly  nothing  else  can  be  done.  So  we  turn  to  a  considera- 
tion of  war;  and  first,  of  that  emotion,  patriotism,  whose 
training  and  redirection  must  underhe  the  movement 
toward  universal  peace. 


306  PUBUC  MORALITY 

What  is  the  meaning  and  value  of  patriotism? 

Matthew  Arnold  began  his  famous  American  address  on 
Numbers  by  quoting  Dr.  Johnson's  saying,  "Patriotism  is 
the  last  refuge  of  a  scoundrel."  We  must  admit  that  to 
certain  forms  of  it  the  gibe  is  pertinent.  But  in  its  essence, 
patriotism  is  that  most  useful  of  human  possessions,  an 
emotion  that  turns  a  duty  into  a  joy.  It  is  necessary  for 
men,  however  burdensome  they  may  find  the  obUgation, 
to  be  loyal  to  the  interests  of  the  State  of  which  they  are 
members.  But  the  patriot  feels  it  no  burden;  he  loves  his 
coxmtry,  and  serves  her  willingly,  as  his  privilege  and  glad 
desire.  To  be  conscious  of  belonging  to  a  social  group, 
whose  interests  are  regarded  as  one's  own,  to  mourn  its  dis- 
asters and  rejoice  in  its  successes,  and  give  one's  hands  and 
brains  without  reluctance,  when  needed,  to  its  service  — 
that  is  patriotism.  For  the  individual,  its  value  is  that  it 
widens  his  sympathies,  gives  him  new  interests,  stimulates 
his  ambition,  warms  his  heart  with  a  sense  of  brotherhood 
in  common  hopes  and  fears;  the  "man  without  a  country  " 
is,  as  Dr.  Hale's  story  graphically  depicted,  Uke  a  man 
without  a  home;  the  "citizens  of  the  world,"  who  voluntarily 
expatriate  themselves,  miss  much  of  the  tang  of  life  that  is 
tasted  by  him  who  keeps  his  local  attachments  and  national 
loyalty.  For  the  State,  its  value  is  that  it  welds  men  to- 
gether, softens  their  civil  strife,  lifts  them  above  petty 
jealousies,  rouses  them  to  maintain  the  common  weal  against 
all  dangers,  external  and  internal.  Especially  in  view  of  our 
hybrid  population  is  it  necessary  to  stimulate  patriotism, 
by  the  celebration  of  national  anniversaries,  the  salutation 
of  the  flag  in  the  public  schools,  and  whatever  other  means 
help  to  enlist  the  emotions  on  the  side  of  civic  consciousness. 

But  while  seeking  to  foster  patriotism,  for  its  great  poten- 
tiahties  of  good,  we  must  guard  dihgently  against  its  lapse 


PATRIOTISM  AND  WORLD-PEACE  307 

into  forms  that  are  really  harmful  to  the  community  which 
it  avowedly  serves.  Like  every  other  great  emotion,  it  needs 
to  be  controlled,  developed  along  the  lines  of  greatest  useful- 
ness, directed  into  proper  channels. 

How  should  patriotism  be  directed  and  qualified? 

(1)  Patriotism  must  be  rationalized,  so  as  to  be  an  enthu- 
siasm for  the  really  great  and  admirable  phases  of  the 
national  life.  Instead  of  a  pride  in  the  prowess  of  army  and 
navy,  of  yachts  or  athletes,  it  should  become  a  pride  in 
national  efficiency  and  health,  in  the  national  art,  literature, 
statesmanship,  and  educational  system,  in  the  beauty  of 
public  buildings  and  the  standards  of  public  manners  and 
morals.  It  should  think  not  so  much  of  defending  by  force 
the  national  "honor,"  as  of  maintaining  standards  of  honor 
that  shall  be  worth  defending.  There  may,  indeed,  still  be 
occasions  when  we  can  learn  the  truth  of  the  old  Roman 
verse,  Dulce  et  decorum  est  pro  patria  mori;  but  the  newer 
patriotism  consists  not  so  much  in  willingness  to  die  as  in 
willingness  to  hve,  for  one's  country  —  to  take  the  trouble 
to  study  conditions,  to  vote,  and  to  work  for  the  improve- 
ment of  conditions  and  the  invigorating  of  the  national  hfe. 
The  real  anti-patriots  are  not  the  peace-men,  but  the  selfish 
and  unscrupulous  money-makers,  the  idle  rich,  the  dissolute, 
the  ill-mannered,  all  those  who  put  private  interest  or 
passion  above  the  public  weal,  help  to  weaken  national 
strength  and  solidarity,  and  bring  our  country's  name  into 
disrepute. 

(2)  Patriotism  must  not  merge  into  conceit  and  blind 
self-satisfaction.  The  superior,  patronizing  air  of  many 
Americans,  their  insufferable  boasting  and  dogmatism,  does 
more,  perhaps,  to  prejudice  foreigners  against  us  than  any 
other  thing.  We  must  teach  international  good  manners, 
a  becoming  modesty,  a  generosity  toward  the  prejudices  of 


308  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

others,  and  a  recognition  of  our  own  shortcomings.  The 
blind  patriotism  that  will  not  confess  to  any  fault,  that 
shouts,  "Our  country,  right  or  wrong,"  leads  in  the  direction 
of  arrogance,  wrongdoing,  and  dishonor.  We  must  be  free  to 
criticize  our  own  government;  we  must  have  no  false  notions 
about  national  "honor"  —  such  as  were  once  held  concern- 
ing personal  "honor"  in  the  days  of  dueling.  We  shall 
doubtless  be  in  the  wrong  sometimes;  we  must  welcome 
enlightenment  and  try  to  learn  the  better  way.  Apologizing 
is  sometimes  nobler  than  bluster;  and  he  is  no  true  lover  of 
his  country  who  seeks  to  condone,  and  so  perpetuate,  her 
errors. 

(3)  Patriotism  must  not  imply  a  hatred  of,  or  desire  to 
hurt,  other  countries.  The  sight  of  one  great  civilization 
seeking  to  injure  another  is  the  shame  of  humanity.  For  in 
the  end  our  interests  are  the  same ;  we  do  not  really  profit 
by  Germany's  loss  any  more  than  Connecticut  would  gain  by 
injury  to  Vermont.  Jingoism,  contempt  of  other  peoples, 
and  purely  selfish  diplomacy,  are  sinful  outgrowths  of 
patriotism.  We  must  learn  to  be  fair  and  good-tempered, 
to  appreciate  the  admirable  in  other  nations,  to  thrill  to 
their  ideals,  and  banish  all  suspicious,  sneering,  or  hyper- 
critical attitudes  toward  them.  It  is  a  pity  that  the  mass  of 
our  people  get  their  conceptions  of  foreign  peoples  and  rulers 
so  largely  through  newspaper  cartoons  and  caricatures, 
which  emphasize  and  exaggerate  their  points  of  difference 
and  inferiority  instead  of  revealing  their  power  and  excel- 
lence. It  is  a  stupid  provinciality  that  conceives  a  distaste 
for  foreigners  because  of  their  alien  manners  and  —  to  us  — 
uncouth  language,  their  different  dress  and  habits.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  they  feel  as  superior  to  us  as  we  to  them,  and 
on  the  whole,  perhaps,  with  as  good  a  right.  No  one  of  tlie 
nations  but  has  some  noble  ideals  and  achievements  to  its 
credit;  if  we  do  not  appreciate  them,  we  are  thereby  proved 


PATRIOTISM  AND  WORLD-PEACE  S09 

to  be  in  need  of  what  they  have  to  give.  And  underneath 
these  usually  superficial  differences,  we  are  all  just  men  and 
women,  with  the  same  loves  and  hatreds,  the  same  needs, 
the  same  weaknesses  and  repentances  and  aspirations.  If  we 
realized  our  common  humanity,  we  should  try  to  treat  them 
as  we  should  wish  to  be  treated  by  them;  the  Golden  Rule, 
the  Christian  spirit,  the  method  of  reason  and  kindness,  is 
as  applicable  to  international  as  to  inter-personal  relations. 
We  should  not  be  too  sensitive  to  the  trivial  breaches  of 
manners,  the  intemperate  words  and  selfish  acts  of  neighbor- 
nations,  but  make  allowances  and  preserve  our  good-fellow- 
ship, as  we  do  in  our  personal  life.  We  should  beware  of 
letting  our  own  patriotism  lead  us  into  like  misconduct. 
Above  all,  we  must  refuse  to  let  it  lead  us  into  the  lust  of 
conquest;  we  must  respect  the  rights  and  liberties  of  other 
peoples,  keep  strictly  to  our  treaty  obligations,  honor  less 
the  patriots  who  have  inflamed  national  hatreds  and  led  us 
to  battle  against  other  peoples  than  those  who  have  wrought 
for  their  country's  righteousness  and  true  honor,  and  let  it 
be  our  pride  to  stand  for  international  comity  and  good 
will. 

A  question  that  may  properly  be  discussed  here  is  whether 
it  is  permissible  to  shift  patriotism  from  one  country  to 
another.  Such  a  change  of  loyalty  is,  in  times  of  war,  called 
treason,  and  naturally  evokes  the  resentment  of  the  deserted 
side.  Even  as  impartial  judges,  we  are  properly  suspicious 
of  such  action,  as  denoting  a  vacillating  nature,  devoid  of 
the  true  spirit  of  loyalty,  or  as  indicative  of  a  selfishness  that 
follows  its  own  personal  advantage.  And  so  far  as  that  sus- 
picion is  well  founded,  we  must  condemn  the  traitor.  But 
certainly,  if  a  man  experiences  a  sincere  change  of  conviction, 
he  should  not  be  required  to  continue  to  serve  the  side  that 
he  now  feels  to  be  in  the  wrong;  every  man  must  be  free  to 


310  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

follow  his  conscience,  even  if  it  leads  him  to  disavow  his  own 
earlier  allegiance.  Suppose  Benedict  Arnold  to  have  devel- 
oped a  sincere  conviction  that  the  American  revolutionists 
were  in  the  wrong,  and  that  the  true  welfare  of  both  Amer- 
ica and  Britain  lay  in  their  continued  union.  In  such  a  case 
he  must,  as  a  conscientious  man,  have  transferred  his  al- 
legiance to  the  Tory  side.  So  a  man  who  had  been  a  worker 
for  the  saloon  interests,  but  had  become  convinced  of  the 
anti-social  influence  of  the  liquor  trade,  would  have  done 
right  to  come  over  to  the  anti-saloon  side  and  work  against 
his  former  associates.  The  really  diflScult  question  lies  rather 
here :  may  such  a  man  use  for  the  advantage  of  the  cause  he 
now  serves  the  knowledge  he  gained,  the  secrets  entrusted 
to  him,  the  power  he  won,  as  a  worker  for  the  opposite 
cause?  If  Benedict  Arnold  was  a  sincere  convert  to  the 
British  cause,  did  he  do  right  in  trying  to  deliver  West  Point 
into  their  hands?  Or  are  we  right  in  execrating  him  for  his 
attempted  breach  of  trust?  Might  the  former  saloon- worker 
use  his  inside  knowledge  of  the  saloon  men's  plans,  and  his 
familiarity  with  the  business,  to  help  the  cause  to  which  he 
had  transferred  his  allegiance?  The  two  cases  may  be  closely 
parallel;  but  each  will  probably  be  decided  by  most  people 
according  to  the  side  upon  which  they  stand.  An  impartial 
judgment  will,  perhaps,  condemn  all  breaches  of  faith,  all 
use  of  delegated  power  for  ends  contrary  to  those  for  which 
the  power  was  delegated,  including  secrets  deliberately  en- 
trusted, but  will  not  condemn  the  use  for  the  new  cause 
of  knowledge  gained  by  the  individual's  own  observation, 
or  influence  won  through  the  power  of  his  own  personality. 

What  have  been  the  benefits  of  war? 

War  has  not  been  an  unmitigated  evil.    In  fairness  we 
must  note  the  following  points :  — 

(I)  In  spite  of  its  danger,  and  its  pain,  war  has  been  a 


PATRIOTISM  AND  WORLD-PEACE  Sll 

great  excitement  and  joy  to  men.  Tennyson  is  doubtless 
true  to  life  in  making  Ulysses  exclaim 

"  All  times  I  have  enjoyed 
Greatly,  have  suffered  greatly  .  .  . 
And  drunk  delight  of  battle  vnih  my  peers. 
Far  on  the  ringing  plains  of  windy  Troy. 

How  dull  it  is  to  pause,  to  make  an  end. 
As  though  to  breathe  were  life!" 

In  the  Iliady  indeed,  we  read:  "With  everything  man  is 
satiated,  sleep,  sweet  singing,  and  the  joyous  dance;  of  all 
these  man  gets  sooner  tired  than  of  war."  In  primitive  times, 
and  even,  though  decreasingly,  in  modern  times,  the  cause 
of  war  has  lain  not  merely  in  the  ends  to  be  attained  thereby, 
but  in  the  sheer  love  of  war  for  its  own  sake  —  the  quick- 
ened heartbeats,  the  sense  of  p>ower  and  daring  and  achieve- 
ment, the  joy  in  martial  music  and  uniforms,  in  the  rhythmic 
footsteps  of  marching  men,  in  the  awakened  thrill  of  patriot- 
ism, the  love  of  effort  and  sacrifice  for  a  cherished  cause. 

To  some  extent  this  primitive  lure  of  war  still  persists. 
But,  fortunately,  the  glory  and  excitement  of  hand-to-hand 
conflict,  the  picturesque  valor  and  visible  achievement  of 
earlier  battles,  are  now  gone.  The  soldier  is  but  a  cog  in  a 
machine,  usually  at  a  considerable  distance  from  his  enemy. 
He  does  not  know  whether  his  shot  has  hit  or  not;  if  he  is 
wounded  it  is  by  an  invisible  hand.  All  the  strain  and  fatigue 
and  pain  of  war  remain,  but  little  of  its  glory  and  delight. 
Moreover,  whatever  normal  satisfaction  has  been  found  in 
war  can  be  had,  as  we  shall  presently  note,  in  other  ways  — 
in  all  sorts  of  generous  rivalries  and  useful  as  well  as  exciting 
endeavors  that  are  open  to  the  modern  man. 

(2)  War  has  necessitated  discipline,  organization,  cour- 
age, self-sacrifice,  and  has  thus  been  a  great  stimulus  to 
virtues  which  to  some  extent  have  carried  over  into  other 
fields.    It  has  kept  men  from  sinking  into  inertia  or  mere 


312  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

pleasure-seeking,  fostered  energy  and  hardihood,  quieted 
civil  strife,  taught  the  necessity  of  union  and  justice  at  home. 
The  patriotism  awakened  by  struggle  against  a  common 
enemy  has  often  persisted  when  the  conflict  was  over,  given 
birth  to  art  and  history,  and  many  an  act  of  devotion  to 
the  State. 

But  national  solidarity  and  a  regime  of  justice  within  the 
State  are  now  our  stable  possession,  while  the  hardier  and 
heroic  virtues  can  be  awakened  in  other  and  less  disastrous 
ways.  War  has  ceased  to  have  its  former  usefulness  as  a  spur 
to  personal  and  social  morality. 

(3)  War  has  often  brought  to  a  nation  increase  of  terri- 
tory, desirable  ports,  mineral  deposits,  improved  strategic 
frontiers,  colonies,  and  other  economic  and  military  advan- 
tages, as  well  as  the  glory  and  enhanced  national  conscious- 
ness that  come  from  victory.  So  in  her  earlier  wars  Germany 
wrested  Silesia  from  Austria,  Alsace-Lorraine  from  France, 
Schleswig-Holstein  from  Denmark,  Kiao  Chow  from  China; 
and  through  the  Great  War  her  rulers  hoped  to  win 
an  empire  from  the  British  Channel  to  the  Persian  Gulf, 
thereby  attaining  that  "place  in  the  sun"  to  which  they 
felt  that  their  strength  and  civilization  entitled  them. 

But  even  if  these  conquests  would  have  been  real  gains 
to  Germany,  they  would  have  been  won  at  the  expense  of 
other  nations.  Violence  and  robbery  by  nations  are  no  more 
righteous  than  when  committed  by  individuals.  And 
though  there  were  undoubtedly  injustices  in  the  political 
map  of  the  world,  we  must  insist  that  nations,  like  individu- 
als, shall  await  the  peaceful  rectification  of  these  wrongs  and 
not  grab  for  themselves  what  they  are  powerful  enough  to 
take. 

(4)  War  has,  directly  or  indirectly,  been  the  means  of 
spreading  the  blessings  of  civilization.  Alexander's  cam- 
paigns brought  Greek  culture  to  the  Eastern  world,  the 


PATRIOTISM  AND  WORLD-PEACE  818 

Roman  cx)nquests  civilized  the  West,  the  famous  Corniche 
Road  was  built  by  Napoleon  to  get  his  troops  into  Italy, 
the  trans-Siberian  railway,  the  subsidized  steamship  lines 
of  modern  nations,  the  Panama  Canal,  owe  their  existence 
primarily  to  the  fear  of  war.  Many  Germans  were  honest 
in  their  conviction  that  their  Kultur  was  so  superior  to  that 
of  the  rest  of  the  world  that  its  imposition,  even  by  force  of 
arms,  would  be  of  greater  benefit  to  conquered  provinces 
than  the  hberty  and  nationaUstic  ideals  which  it  would 
supplant. 

But  this  Kultur,  if  actually  superior,  could  have  won  its 
way  better  by  its  inherent  attractiveness  than  by  force  of 
arms.  To-day  all  lands  are  open  to  peaceful  penetration; 
missionaries  and  traders  do  more  to  civilize  than  armies. 
And  if  the  building  of  certain  roads  and  railways  and  canals 
might  have  been  somewhat  postponed  in  an  era  of  stable 
peace,  many  more  material  improvements,  actually  more 
imperative  if  less  spectacular,  would  certainly  have  been 
carried  out  with  the  vast  sums  of  money  saved  from  war 
expenditures. 

(5)  The  only  legitimate  excuse  for  war  is  to  preserve 
important  human  goods  that  would  be  lost  by  conquest  or 
oppression;  as  when  the  Greeks  at  Marathon  repelled  the 
barbaric  hordes  of  Asia,  or  when  Charles  Martel  and  the 
Franks  checked  the  advance  of  the  Saracens  at  Tours. 
WTiether  the  loss  of  these  goods  would  be  a  greater  evil  than 
the  evils  brought  on  by  war  it  is  almost  impossible,  in  any 
given  case,  to  prophesy  in  advance.  In  many  cases  the 
oppression  would  in  time  remedy  itself  without  war,  and 
the  goods  desired  would  be  only  partially  or  temporarily 
lost.  In  other  cases  the  war  of  self-defense  proves  a  losing 
one;  and  not  only  the  goods  whose  loss  was  feared  are  for- 
feited, but  other  goods  as  well,  that  non-resistance  would 
have  preserved.    The  overrunning  of  England  by  Saxons, 


314  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

Danes,  and  Normans  successively  was  probably  less  of  an 
evil  than  a  war  of  defense  carried  to  the  point  of  practical 
extermination.  If  the  American  colonies  had  had  a  httle 
more  patience,  they  could  have  won  the  Hberty  they  craved 
mthout  war  and  separation  from  the  mother  country  —  as 
Canada  and  Australia  have  done.  If  the  United  States  had 
bad  a  Httle  more  patience  and  tact  and  diplomacy,  Cuba 
might  perhaps  have  been  saved  from  the  intolerable  oppres- 
sion of  Spain  without  war. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  highly  questionable  if  the 
goods  we  most  prize  —  liberty  of  life,  limb,  speech,  and  be- 
lief, democratic  self-government,  and  the  rest — could  ever 
have  been  won  permanently  for  man  without  the  heroic 
struggles  of  generations  past.  Certainly  the  great  majority 
of  Belgians  and  French  men  and  women,  Serbians  and 
Montenegrins,  Britishers  and  Americans,  would  rather  lose 
everything  else  than  their  liberty  and  autonomy.  So  long  as 
liberty-loving  nations  are  ruthlessly  trampled  upon  by  ag- 
gressive neighbors,  so  long  they  will  fight  to  the  end  for 
the  right  to  live  their  lives  in  their  own  way,  under  their 
own  flag.  And  so  long  will  other  liberty-loving  nations  leap 
to  their  rescue,  without  calculation  of  cost. 

What  are  the  evils  of  war? 

(1)  We  need  not  dwell  on  the  physical  and  mental  suffer- 
ing caused  by  war;  General  Sherman's  famous  declaration, 
"War  is  hell!"  sums  the  matter  up.  Agonizing  wounds, 
pitiless  disease,  the  permanent  crippling,  enfeeblement,  or 
death  of  vigorous  men  in  the  prime  of  life,  the  anguish  of 
wives  and  sweethearts,  the  loneliness  of  widows,  the  lack  of 
care  for  orphans  —  it  is  impossible  for  those  who  have  not 
lived  through  a  great  war  to  realize  the  horror  of  it,  the  cruel 
pain  suffered  by  those  on  the  field,  the  torturing  suspense  of 


PATRIOTISM  AND  WORLD-PEACE  315 

those  left  behind.  It  is,  indeed,  a  sad  commentary  on  man's 
wisdom  that,  with  all  the  distress  that  inevitably  inheres  in 
human  life,  he  should  have  voluntarily  brought  upon  him- 
self still  greater  suffering  and  premature  death. 

(2)  But  the  moral  harm  of  war  is  no  less  conspicuous  than 
the  physical.  It  fosters  cruelty,  callousness,  contempt  of 
life;  it  kills  sympathy  and  the  gentler  virtues;  it  coarsens  and 
leads  almost  inevitably  to  sensuality.  After  a  war  there  is 
always  a  marked  increase  in  crime  and  sexual  vice;  ex- 
soldiers  are  restless,  and  find  it  hard  to  settle  down  to  a 
normal  life.  There  is  a  permanent  coarsening  of  fiber. 
Even  the  maintenance  of  armies  in  time  of  peace  is  a  great 
moral  danger.  The  unnatural  barrack-hfe,  the  requisite 
postponement  of  marriage,  the  opportunity  for  physical  and 
moral  contagion,  make  military  posts  commonly  sources  of 
moral  contamination.  Prostitution  flourishes  and  illegiti- 
macy increases  where  soldiers  are  quartered;  the  army  is  a 
bad  school  of  morals.^ 

Add  to  this  indictment  the  stimulus  to  national  hatreds 
caused  by  war,  the  inflaming  of  resentments  and  checking 
of  international  good  will.  The  instinctive  racial  antipa- 
thies of  the  Balkan  peoples  have  been  immeasurably  deep- 
ened by  the  recent  wars  on  the  peninsula.  It  will  prob- 
ably be  many  years  before  the  people  of  Germany  are 
looked  upon  again  with  cordiality  and  respect  by  the  other 
peoples  of  the  earth.  The  eventual  brotherhood  of  man 
is  indefinitely  postponed  by  every  war  and  rumor  of  war. 

The  interest  in  war  also  takes  attention  and  effort  away 
from  the  remedying  of  social  and  moral  evils;  it  is  useless  to 
attempt  any  irrelevant  moral  campaign  while  a  war  is  on. 
Jane  Addaras  tells  us,  in  Twenty  Years  at  Hull  Bouse,  that 
when  she  visited  England  in  1896  she  found  it  full  of  social 
enthusiasm,  scientific  research,  scholarship,  and  public  spirit; 

^  The  American  army  in  the  Great  War  was  exceptionally  safeguarded. 


316  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

while  on  a  second  visit,  in  1900,  all  enthusiasm  and  energy 
seemed  to  be  absorbed  by  the  Boer  War,  leaving  little  for 
humanitarian  undertakings.  The  Great  War  has  inciden- 
tally forwarded  certain  social  reforms,  namely,  those  that 
have  come  to  be  recognized  as  increasing  military  or  eco- 
nomic efficiency  —  such  as  the  checking  of  the  liquor  traffic 
and  of  wasteful  business  competition.  But  other  lines  of 
amelioration  have  received  a  decisive  check. 

(3)  A  less  obvious,  but  even  more  lasting,  evil  is  that 
caused  by  the  loss  of  the  best  blood  of  a  nation.  In  general, 
the  strongest  and  best  men  go  to  the  field;  the  weaklings 
and  cowards  are  left  to  produce  the  next  generation.  The 
inevitable  result  is  racial  degeneration.  The  decline  of  the 
Greek  and  Roman  civilizations  was  doubtless  in  large  part 
due  to  the  continual  killing-off  of  the  best  stocks,  until  the 
earlier  and  nobler  breed  of  men  almost  ceased  to  exist.  The 
effect  of  modern  war  is  the  exact  opposite  of  that  of  primi- 
tive war,  where  all  the  men  had  to  fight,  and  the  strongest 
or  bravest  or  swiftest  survived;  strength  and  valor  and  speed 
avail  nothing  against  modern  projectiles,  and  it  is  the  stay- 
at-homes  who  are  selected  for  survival,  in  general  the  weak- 
est and  least  worthy.  War  is  the  greatest  of  dysgenic  forces, 
and  undoes  the  effect  of  a  hundred  eugenic  laws. 

(4)  The  vast  and  increasing  expense  of  war  is  a  very 
serious  matter  for  the  moralist,  because  it  means  a  drain  of 
the  resources  that  might  otherwise  be  utilized  for  the 
advance  of  civilization.  The  Great  War  has  left  the  world 
with  a  debt  approaching  three  hundred  billion  dollars  (be- 
fore the  war  the  world's  debt  was  forty-four  billions)  — 
enough  money  to  have  covered  Europe  and  America  with 
excellent  roads,  comfortable  homes  for  every  one,  and  given 
education  and  pleasant  conditions  of  life  to  every  man, 
woman,  and  child.  Every  shot  from  a  modern  sixteen-inch 
gun  costs  approximately  a  thousand  dollars!    Add  to  this 


PATRIOTISM  AND  WORLD-PEACE  317 

direct  cost  the  indirect  costs  of  war,  not  reckoned  in  the 
usual  figures  —  the  loss  of  the  time  and  work  of  the  millions 
of  able-bodied  men,  the  economic  loss  of  their  illness  and 
death,  the  destruction  of  buildings,  bridges,  railways,  etc., 
the  obstruction  of  commerce,  the  paralysis  of  industry  and 
agriculture,  the  ravages  and  looting  of  armies,  the  mainten* 
ance  of  hospitals  and  nurses,  and  then,  finally,  the  money 
given  in  pensions  or  insurance.  Add  further  the  cost  of  the 
maintenance  of  armies  upon  a  peace-footing  —  the  feeding 
and  clothing  of  *the  men,  the  building  and  maintenance  of 
barracks  and  forts,  of  battleships  and  torpedo  boats,  of  guns 
and  ammunition,  automobiles,  aeroplanes,  and  the  increasing 
list  of  expensive  modern  military  appurtenances.  Europe 
spent  nearly  two  billion  dollars  a  year  before  the  Great  War 
on  its  armies  and  navies  —  money  enough  to  build  four  or 
five  Panama  canals  annually.  The  entire  merchant  marine 
of  the  world  was  worth  before  the  war  but  three  billion  dol- 
lars. More  than  this,  over  four  million  strong  young  men 
were  kept  under  arms  in  Europe,  a  million  more  workers 
were  engaged  in  making  ships,  weapons,  gunpowder,  mili- 
tary stores.  Over  a  million  horses  were  kept  for  army  use. 
This  money  and  these  men,  if  used  in  the  true  interests  of 
humanity,  could  have  provided  adequate  clothing,  food,  and 
housing  for  every  inhabitant  of  Europe. 

What  can  we  do  to  hasten  world-peace? 

There  are  powerful  forces,  which  without  our  conscious 
effort  have  been  making  for  the  abolition  of  war :  its  growing 
cost;  the  extension  of  mutual  knowledge,  through  the  news- 
papers and  magazines,  through  travel,  through  exchange 
professorships  and  Rhodes  scholarships  and  all  interna- 
tional associations;  the  growing  sensitiveness  to  suffering; 
the  spread  of  eugenic  ideals;  and  the  increasing  interest  in 
world-wide  social,  moral,  and  material  problems.    Other, 


818  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

more  conscious,  means  toward  this  end  which  have  been 
suggested  may  be  here  noted. 

(1)  We  must  stimulate  counter-enthusiasms  to  take  the 
place  of  the  passion  for  war.  After  all,  the  great  war  of 
mankind  is  the  war  against  pain,  disease,  poverty,  and  sin; 
the  real  heroes  are  not  those  who  squander  human  strength 
and  courage  in  fighting  one  another,  but  those  who  fight  for 
man  against  his  eternal  foes.  The  war  of  man  against  man 
is  dissension  in  the  ranks.  We  must  make  it  seem  more 
glorious  to  men  to  enlist  in  these  humanitarian  campaigns 
than  in  the  miserable  civil  wars  that  impede  our  common 
triumphs.^  Further,  we  should  awaken  interest  in  innocent 
excitements  and  rivalries  —  in  sports,  in  industrial  competi- 
tion, in  missionary  enterprise.  A  world's  series  in  baseball, 
or  an  intercollegiate  football  season,  can  work  off  the  restless 
energies  of  many  thousands  who  in  earlier  days  would  have 
lusted  for  war.  The  revival  of  the  Olympic  games  was  defi- 
nitely planned  as  a  substitute  for  war.  And  men  must  have 
not  only  excitements  and  rivalries,  but  real  diflSculties  and 
dangers  —  something  to  try  their  courage  and  endurance 
and  train  them  in  hardihood.  For  this  we  have  exploration 
and  mountaineering,  the  prosecution  of  difficult  engineering 
undertakings,  the  attacking  of  corruption  and  the  achieve- 
ment of  political  and  social  reforms. ^ 

1  Cf.  Perry,  Moral  Economy,  p.  32:  "War  between  man  and  man  is  an 
obsolescent  form  of  heroism.  .  .  .  The  general  battle  of  life,  the  first  and 
last  battle,  is  still  on;  and  it  has  that  in  it  of  danger  and  resistance,  of  com- 
radeship and  of  triumph,  that  can  stir  the  blood." 

And  cf.  President  Eliot's  fine  eulogy  of  Dr.  Lazear,  who  died  of  yellow 
fever  after  voluntarily  undergoing  inoculation  by  a  mosquito,  in  the 
attempt  to  learn  how  to  stay  the  disease:  "With  more  than  the  courage  and 
the  devotion  of  the  soldier,  he  risked  and  lost  his  life  to  show  how  a  fearful 
pestilence  is  communicated  and  how  its  ravages  may  be  prevented." 

2  Cf.  W.  James,  "The  Moral  Equivalent  of  War"  (in  Memories  and 
Studies),  p.  287:  "We  must  make  new  energies  and  hardihoods  continue  the 
manliness  to  which  the  military  mind  so  faithfully  clings.   Martial  virtues 


PATRIOTISM  AND  WORLD-PEACE  319 

(2)  We  must  stamp  deep  into  the  consciousness  of  coming 
generations  that  reaHzation  of  the  evils  of  war  which  this 
generation  has  had  so  ineffaceably  thrust  upon  it.  We  may 
spread  popular  knowledge  of  the  evils  of  war.  It  is  incredible 
that  this  barbarous  method  of  deciding  disputes  can  be 
continued  if  the  people  generally  retain  a  lively  realization 
of  its  cost  in  pain,  money,  and  degradation.  Already  many 
societies  exist  for  the  diffusion  of  literature  on  the  matter,^ 
conscientious  editors  of  journals  and  newspapers  use  their 
columns  for  peace  propaganda,  pubHc  schools  teach  chil- 
dren the  evils  of  war,  ministers  use  their  pulpits  to  de- 
nounce it.  All  this  effort  must  be  pushed  in  greater  degree 
until  a  general  public  sentiment  is  aroused  that  will  insist 
upon  the  creation  of  a  mechanism  adequate  to  ensure  the 
peaceful  settlement  of  all  international  difficulties. 

(3)  Indirectly,  too,  education  and  association  can  make 
war  more  and  more  unlikely.  W"e  can  create  a  greater  knowl- 
edge of  and  sympathy  with  other  nations.  We  can  to  consid- 
erable extent  train  out  pugnacity,  quick  temper,  resentful- 
ness,  and  train  in  sensitiveness  to  suffering,  sympathy, 
breadth  of  view.  All  such  moral  progress  helps  in  the  war 
against  war.  We  can  encourage  the  interchange  of  professors 
and  scientists  between  countries,  increase  the  number  of 
professional  and  industrial  international  organizations.  The 
International  Socialist  party,  with  its  threatened  weapon  of 

must  be  the  enduring  cement,  intrepidity,  contempt  of  softness,  surrender 
of  private  interest,  obedience  to  command,  must  still  remain  the  rock  upon 
which  states  are  built.  .  .  .  The  martial  type  of  character  can  be  bred 
without  war.  .  .  .  The  only  thing  needed  henceforward  is  to  inflame  the 
civic  temper  as  past  history  has  inflamed  the  military  temper." 

*  And  of  course  for  other  work  in  the  direction  of  peace.  The  oldest 
such  organization  in  this  country  is  the  American  Peace  Society.  The 
Association  for  International  Conciliation,  founded  in  Paris  by  Baron 
d 'Estoumelles  de  Constant,  in  1899,  has  branches  now  in  all  the  imp)ortant 
countries.  Lately  we  have  Mr.  Carnegie's  endowments  for  international 
peace. 


SaO  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

the  general  strike  against  war,  may  yet,  in  spite  of  its  impo- 
tence in  the  Great  War,  become  the  most  eiEcient  of  all 
forces.  The  International  Federation  of  Students  {Corda 
Fratres)y  founded  at  Turin  in  1898,  with  its  branches  in  all 
civilized  countries,  may  be  of  great  use.  A  censorship  of  the 
press  to  exclude  all  jingoistic  and  inflammatory  utterances 
may  at  times  be  necessary. 

(4)  Politically,  we  must  make  our  public  policies  so  high 
and  unselfish  that  other  nations  cannot  justly  take  offense. 
Most  wars  are  provoked  by  national  greed  or  selfishness, 
lack  of  manners,  or  the  breaking  of  treaty  obligations.  The 
United  States,  it  must  be  confessed,  has  to  some  extent  lost 
the  respect  and  trust  of  other  nations  for  its  high-handed 
methods  and  disregard  of  treaties.  Congress  is  allowed  to 
modify  or  abrogate  any  treaty  without  consultation  with 
the  other  nation  involved;  and  we  have  what  many  critics 
deem  acts  of  grave  dishonor  upon  our  record.^  In  other 
ways  we  have  needlessly  offended  and  insulted  other  nations. 
The  voter  must  watch  the  conduct  of  parties  and  work  to 
elect  men  who,  refraining  from  provoking  other  nations, 
will  aim  for  peace. 

(5)  Arbitration  treaties  not  backed  by  an  international 
force  are  of  dubious  value.  They  may,  in  many  instances, 
serve  to  deter  from  war.  But  whenever  an  unscrupulous  or 
passionate  nation  refuses  to  abide  by  such  a  treaty,  the 
nation  which  has  counted  on  it  to  preserve  peace  will  find 
itself  at  a  grave  disadvantage.  It  is  questionable  whether, 
under  severe  stress,  any  treaty  not  internationally  enforced 

*  For  example,  the  abrogation  of  our  long-standing  treaty  with  Russia, 
without  her  consent,  which  deserved  to  forfeit  her  friendship;  or  what 
seemed  to  many  the  violation  of  our  treaty-promise  to  England  by  Congress 
in  its  exemption,  now  repealed,  of  American  coastwise  shipping  from  canal 
tolls.  It  would  be  well  to  engrave  over  the  entrance  to  the  Capitol  the 
Psalmist's  words:  "He  that  sweareth  to  his  own  hurt  and  changeth  not." 


PATRIOTISM  AND  WORLD-PEACE  321 

could  be  securely  relied  upon  or  regarded  as  more  than  a 
delusive  "scrap  of  paper." 

(6)  The  contention  that  a  great  national  armament  is  the 
best  guaranty  of  peace  is  untrue,  for  two  reasons:  it  is  an 
inevitable  provocation  to  other  nations  to  match  it  with 
other  great  armaments;  and  the  very  existence  of  battle- 
ships and  weapons  creates  a  temptation  to  use  them.  The 
professional  soldier  is  always  eager  to  see  active  service,  to 
prove  his  efficiency,  have  excitement,  win  glory  and  advance- 
ment. As  the  Odyssey  puts  it,  "The  steel  blade  itself  often 
incites  to  deeds  of  violence."  On  the  other  hand,  the  era  of 
universal  disarmament  cannot  arrive  until  the  nations  can 
be  ensured  against  predatory  aggression.  The  obvious  need 
is  for  an  international  force,  in  the  service  of  a  League  of 
Nations,  powerful  enough  to  crush  any  member  or  outside 
nation  that  breaks  the  peace  of  the  world. 

(7)  Other  pressing  needs  are  for  the  "  self-determination  * ' 
of  nationalities,  whereby  none  should  be  forced  to  live  under 
alien  and  hated  rule.  And  for  popular  control  of  govern- 
ment everywhere,  so  that  the  peoples  cannot  be  dragooned 
into  war  by  unscrupulous  rulers.  Universal  democracy  and 
autonomy  would  remove  nine  tenths  of  the  causes  that  have 
kept  Europe  for  generations  in  or  at  the  brink  of  war. 

(8)  The  ultimate  solution  for  international  difficulties 
will  certainly  be  some  sort  of  world-organization,  with  leg- 
islative, judicial,  and  executive  functions.  It  is  as  yet  (1920) 
too  early  to  say  with  assurance  that  the  present  League  of 
Nations  is  to  become  such  a  genuine  world-organization, 
with  actual  will  and  power  to  enforce  justice  and  peace. 
The  great  majority  of  nations  have,  at  time  of  writing, 
joined  this  League ;  and  it  seems  likely  that  all  will  be  mem- 
bers before  long.  If  far-sighted  statesmanship  can  be  found 
to  guide  its  destinies,  it  may  become  the  long-hoped-for 
"parliament  of  nations,  federation  of  the  world."  If  it  falls 


322  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

to  pieces,  or  becomes  impotent,  owing  to  the  selfish  and 
imperiaUstic  policies  of  nations,  some  other  federation  will 
surely  arise  to  take  its  place.  For  only  by  the  constitution 
and  maintenance  of  such  a  supernational  mechanism  can 
future  wars,  more  destructive  than  any  yet  experienced,  be 
avoided.  There  is  no  moral  question  before  the  world  at 
this  time  of  more  universal  importance  than  this:  Will  the 
peoples,  and  their  elected  rulers,  learn  to  think  internation- 
ally, rather  than  in  terms  of  a  selfish  and  greedy  national- 
ism? If  not,  the  future  of  civilization  looks  grave. 

For  encouragement,  we  may  remember  that  the  wager  of 
battle  was  the  original  method  of  settling  private  disputes; 
probably  it  will  be  difficult  for  our  grandchildren  or  great- 
grandchildren to  realize  that  as  late  as  early  in  the  twenti- 
eth century  the  most  civilized  nations  still  in  public  mat- 
ters had  recourse  to  the  old  and  barbarous  wager  of  battle. 

H.  Spencer,  "Patriotism,"  "Rebarbarization"  (in  Facts  and 
Comments).  G.  K.  Chesterton,  "Patriotism"  (in  The  Defendant). 
G.  Santayana,  Reason  in  Society,  chap.  vn.  R.  Tagore,  Nationalism. 
Bert  rand  Russell,  Political  Ideals  y  chap.  v.  E.  Carpenter,  The 
Healing  of  Nations,  vn. 

The  American  Association  for  International  Conciliation  (Sub- 
Station  84,  New  York  City)  sends  free  literature  on  request.  A 
bibliography  of  peace  literature  is  in  their  pamphlet  No.  G4. 

W.  James,  "Speech  at  the  Peace  Banquet,"  and  "The  Moral 
Equivalent  of  War"  (in  Memories  and  Studies).  Jane  Addams, 
Newer  Ideals  of  Peace,  chaps,  i,  vin.  J.  Novicow,  War  and  its  Al- 
leged Benefits.  N.  Angell,  The  Great  Illusion.  W.  J.  Tucker,  TJie 
New  Movement  of  Humanity.  V.  L.  Kellogg,  Beyond  War,  chap.  i. 
D.  S.  Jordan,  War  and  Waste;  Wars  Aftermath.  C.  W.  Eliot,  The 
Way  Toward  Peace.  H.  R.  Marshall,  War  and  the  Ideal  of  Peace. 
Bertrand  Russell,  Justice  in  War  Time.  J.  H.  Holmes,  New  Wars 
for  Old.  W.  Wilson,  Why  We  Are  at  War.  Th.  Roosevelt,  Fear 
God  and  Take  Your  Own  Part.  R.  B.  Perry,  TJie  Free  Man  and  the 
Soldier.  H.  N.  Brailsford,  A  League  of  Nations.  G.  L.  Dickinson, 
The  Choice  Before  Us.   The  European  Anarchy. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

POLITICAL  PURITY  AND  EFFICIENCY 

The  attainment  of  a  stable  peace  is  the  first  public  duty; 
the  second  is  the  achievement  of  an  efficient  government. 
Where  politics  are  corrupt  and  inefficient  all  social  progress 
is  obstructed ;  and  all  such  ideals  of  a  reshaped  human  society 
as  the  Socialists  yearn  toward  must  be  postponed  until  we 
have  learned  to  run  the  machinery  of  government  smoothly 
and  effectively.  The  backward  condition  of  peoples  whose 
government  is  unintelligent  needs  no  examples.  The  Russo- 
Japanese  War  brought  into  sharp  contrast  a  nation  of  Hmit- 
less  resources  and  fine  human  stock  handicapped  and  crip- 
pled by  a  selfish  bureaucracy,  and  a  much  smaller  nation, 
inexperienced  and  remote  from  the  great  world  currents, 
but  strengthened  and  made  efficient  by  an  intelligent  and 
patriotic  administration.  In  Persia  and  Mesopotamia  we 
find  poverty,  ignorance,  desert,  where  once  flourished 
mighty  empires:  bad  government  is  the  cause.  Greece  and 
Italy  and  Egypt  are  struggling  to  recover  from  centuries 
of  misgovernment.  In  this  country  government  has  been 
far  wiser  and  more  responsive  to  the  community's  needs; 
and  yet  the  apathy  of  the  intelligent  public  and  the  intrusion 
of  private  greed  have  distorted  and  obstructed  legislation 
until  social  reformers  throw  up  their  hands  in  despair.  But 
there  are  hopeful  signs.  The  causes  of  this  political  misman- 
agement are  being  more  generally  recognized  to-day,  and  it  is 
probable  that  the  next  few  decades  will  witness  great  strides 
toward  improving  the  mechanism  of  American  government 
and  banishing  corruption. 


S24  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

What  are  the  forces  making  for  corruption  in  politics? 

(1)  By  one  means  or  other,  unscrupulous  rulers  and  oflficc 
holders  have  always  been  able  to  replenish  their  private 
income  by  misuse  of  their  official  powers.  Since  popular 
government  was  first  tried  there  has  existed  a  class  of  pro- 
fessional politicians  with  little  regard  for  the  public  welfare 
and  ready  to  do  anything  to  keep  themselves  in  power  and 
fatten  their  pocketbooks.  We  have  in  America  the  well- 
known  phenomena  of  the  "machine,"  the  "ring,"  and  the 
"boss,"  whose  motto  is  "Politics  is  politics,"  and  who  are 
unashamed  to  put  their  interests  above  those  of  the  people 
at  large.  Their  control  of  the  machinery  of  government 
enables  them,  unless  ingenious  provisions  prevent,  to  wink 
at  illegal  voting  and  fraudulent  counting  of  votes,  to  get  the 
dregs  of  the  population  out  to  the  polls,  and  perhaps  intimi- 
date their  opponents  from  voting.  The  police  power  has 
often  been  misused  for  such  purposes;  the  gerrymander  is 
another  clever  method  of  manipulating  the  results  of  elec- 
tions. Such  means,  together  with  the  use  as  bribe  money 
of  funds  deflected  from  the  public  treasury,  the  blackmail  of 
vice,  and  the  acceptance  of  "contributions"  from  favored 
parties,  create  a  vicious  circle  which  tends  to  keep  in  power 
corrupt  officials  who  have  once  got  hold. 

(2)  But  the  power  of  unscrupulous  politicians  is  made  far 
greater  by  the  support  of  those  whose  personal  interests  they 
make  a  business  of  furthering.  Whole  sections  of  the  people 
are  pleased  and  placated  and  bribed  by  special  legislation  in 
their  favor,  and  as  many  individuals  as  possible  are  given 
positions.  Behind  every  "boss"  there  are  always  hundreds 
of  men  who  owe  their  "jobs"  to  him,  and  many  others  who 
cherish  promises  and  hopes  for  personal  favors.  Jane 
Addams  tells  us  that  upon  one  occasion  when  the  reformers 
in  Chicago  tried  to  oust  a  corrupt  alderman  they  "soon  dis- 


POLITICAL  PURITY  AND  EFFICIENCY  325 

covered  that  approximately  one  out  of  every  five  voters  in 
the  nineteenth  ward  at  that  time  held  a  job  dependent  upon 
the  good  will  of  the  alderman."  ^ 

(3)  Of  especial  importance  are  the  great  "interests"  that 
are  always  to  be  found  behind  a  corrupt  administration. 
These  corporations  are  so  dependent  upon  the  good  will  of 
the  Government  for  their  prosperity,  and  even  for  their 
very  existence,  that  from  the  primitive  instinct  of  self- 
preservation  as  well  as  from  the  greed  of  exorbitant  profits, 
they  stand  ready  to  give  liberal  bribes,  or  at  least  to  back 
with  money  and  moral  support  the  party  machine  that 
promises  to  favor  them.  They  control  a  large  proportion  of 
the  newspapers  and  magazines,  and  are  thus  able  to  distort 
facts,  protect  themselves  from  attack,  and  even  stir  up  a 
factitious  distrust  of  would-be  reformers.  As  every  little 
contractor  naturally  favors  the  '*ring"  that  awards  con- 
tracts to  him,  so  the  great  corporations  publicly  or  secretly 
support  it.  The  Hquor  trade  and  the  vice  caterers  —  the 
keepers  of  gambUng-dens,  illegal  "shows,"  and  disorderly 
houses  —  back  by  their  money  and  votes  the  "machine" 
that  they  know  will  let  them  alone.  But,  indeed,  the  most 
"respectable"  trusts  and  pubhc-service  corporations  are 
often  most  culpable,  and  the  greatest  power  behind  the 
throne.  Their  interest  in  the  personnel  of  the  Government 
is  far  keener  than  that  of  the  average  citizen;  they  can  usu- 
ally succeed,  by  cleverly  specious  presentations  of  the  situa- 
tion, in  dividing  the  forces  against  them,  and  often,  by 
"deals,"  in  effecting  secret  alliances  of  the  "rings"  in  con- 
trol of  supposedly  opposing  parties.  The  poor  are  right  in 
supposing  that  these  powerful  "interests"  are  their  greateSw 
enemy;  as  that  keen  observer  of  our  national  life,  Mr.  Bryce, 
has  put  it,  "the  power  of  money  is  for  popular  government: 
the  most  constant  source  of  danger." 

^  Twenty  Years  at  Hull  House,  p.  316. 


S26  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

(4)  But,  after  all,  this  combination  of  forces  in  defiance  ol 
the  common  weal  would  not  be  effective  but  for  the  com- 
parative indifference  of  the  people,  which  may  thus  be  called 
a  contributing  factor.  The  average  voter  feels  no  stimulus 
of  self-interest  in  the  matter;  "what  is  everybody's  business 
is  nobody's  business,"  and  the  individual  finds  his  personal 
influence  so  slight  that  it  seems  hardly  worth  his  pains  to  do 
anything  about  it.  Occasionally  popular  passions  become 
aroused  and  reform  movements  make  a  clean  sweep;  but 
the  result  is  usually  temporary,  and  when  the  general  atten- 
tion is  turned  elsewhere  the  bosses  creep  back  to  power. 
Modern  life  has  so  many  more  personal  interests  in  it  than 
the  ancient  republics  had,  that  public  affairs  seldom  become 
so  big  and  absorbing  an  interest.  And  the  more  public 
affairs  become  the  concern  of  a  special  group  of  men  with 
dubious  reputations,  the  more  politics  are  shunned  by  the 
average  citizen.  Home  life  and  business,  social  life  and 
amusements,  aesthetic,  intellectual,  and  religious  interests, 
are  so  much  more  attractive  to  him,  that  he  gives  little 
heed  to  political  conditions,  lets  himself  be  duped  by  news- 
paper talk,  and  votes  blindly  some  party  ticket,  without 
realizing  his  gullibility  and  his  poor  citizenship. 

What  are  the  evil  results  of  political  corruption? 

(1)  The  obvious  result  of  these  conditions  is  ineflSciency 
of  administration  and  waste  of  the  public  moneys.  The  real 
interests  of  city  or  State  are  neglected.  Streets  become 
filthy,  unsanitary  tenements  are  built,  fire-trap  factories 
and  theaters  allowed;  every  effort  to  improve  public  health 
is  sidetracked,  and  the  will  of  the  people  is  subordinated  to 
the  will  of  the  gang.  OflBcials  are  nominated  or  appointed 
not  for  their  competence  but  for  their  subservience  to  the 
organization;  the  boss  himself,  inexpert  in  administration, 
responsible  to  no  one,  and  usually  bribable,  dictates  public 


POLITICAL  PURITY  AND  EFFICIENCY  327 

policy.  The  public  funds  disappear  as  in  a  quicksand; 
extravagant  prices  are  paid  for  building  lots  and  contracts, 
in  return  for  political  support  or  a  share  of  the  loot.  Phila- 
delphia before  the  reform  movement  of  1911  borrowed  fifty- 
one  million  dollars  in  four  years,  and  at  the  end  had  prac- 
tically nothing  to  show  for  it,  with  the  city  dirty,  buildings 
out  of  repair,  and  everything  important  neglected.  One 
contractor  in  the  "ring"  was  paid  $520,000  a  year  to  remove 
the  city  garbage  —  a  privilege  which  is  actually  paid  for  in 
some  cities,  the  value  of  the  garbage  for  fertilizer  and  the 
manufacture  of  other  products  making  the  collection  of  it  a 
profitable  business. 

(2)  Another  evil  result  lies  in  the  subordination  of  general 
to  local  interests.  The  scattered  and  ineffective  *' pork- 
barrel'*  appropriations  of  Congress  are  dictated  not  by 
intelligent  consideration  for  the  public  weal,  but  by  the 
desire  to  throw  a  sop  to  this  and  that  section  of  the  country, 
and  thereby  win  votes.  Costly  buildings  are  authorized  in 
many  towns  where  they  are  not  needed,  river  and  harbor 
improvements  proceed  at  a  halting  pace  in  a  hundred  places 
at  once,  unnecessary  navy  yards  and  custom  houses  are 
maintained  at  heavy  cost,  the  army  is  scattered  at  many 
small  and  expensive  posts.  Even  the  tariff  is  largely  a  deal 
between  various  manufacturing  interests,  rather  than  an 
instrument  of  the  public  good.  Most  officials  consider  them- 
selves bound  to  exert  all  their  influence  in  favor  of  their 
particular  constituency's  desires;  if  they  cross  those  wishes 
they  will  probably  not  be  reelected,  while  if  they  sacrifice 
the  interests  of  the  people  as  a  whole  they  will  be  immune 
from  punishment.  Most  of  the  state  universities,  normal 
schools,  asylums,  and  other  institutions  have  been  located 
where  they  are  as  the  result  of  a  deal  between  different 
sections  rather  than  with  a  view  to  the  most  advantageous 
site. 


828  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

(3)  To  these  grave  evils  we  must  add  the  moral  harm  of 
selfish  and  corrupt  politics.  Standards  of  honor  are  blurred, 
the  spirit  of  public  service  is  almost  lost  sight  of,  and  the 
cheap  materialism  to  which  our  prosperous  age  is  too  easily 
prone  flourishes  apace.  The  man  who  would  succeed  in 
politics  —  unless  he  is  a  man  of  extraordinary  personality 
and  favored  by  good  fortune  —  must  be  disingenuous  and  a 
time-server,  must  truckle  to  bosses  and  do  favors  for  the 
ring;  he  must  appeal  to  prejudice  and  passion  and  put  his 
personal  advancement  before  his  ideals.  No  one  can  esti- 
mate the  evil  effect  that  corruption  in  politics  has  had  upon 
the  national  character.  When  we  add  the  indirect  effects  — 
the  distortion  of  the  public  news-service,  the  protection  of 
vice,  the  insecurity  of  justice  —  the  moral  evils  of  political 
corruption  are  seen  to  be  of  gravest  importance. 

What  is  the  political  duty  of  the  citizen? 

(1)  In  the  present  chaotic  state  of  our  machinery  of 
government,  where  corruption  is  so  easy  and  efficiency  so 
difficult  to  obtain,  the  burden  must  rest  upon  every  conscien- 
tious voter  to  play  his  part  with  intelligence.  He  must  study 
the  situation,  keep  himself  informed  as  to  candidates  and 
issues,  watch  the  conduct  of  officials,  vote  at  primaries  and 
elections,  however  irksome  and  fruitless  this  effort  may  seem. 
Above  all,  he  must  use  independence  of  judgment,  and  not 
let  himself  be  duped  by  disingenuous  appeals  to  "party 
loyalty";  where  bUnd  party  voting  is  prevalent  there  is 
little  stimulus  to  party  managers  to  nominate  able  and 
honorable  men  or  to  promote  needed  legislation.    Public 
opinion  must  be  kept  aroused,  the  sense  of  individual  respon- 
sibility awakened,  and  political  matters  kept  in  the  glare  of 
publicity.    At  election  times  whoever  can  spare  the  time 
should,  after  learning  the  local  situation,  take  some  part  in 
the  campaign,  by  public  speaking,  personal  soliciting  of  votes, 


POLITICAL  PURITY  AND  EFFICIENCY  329 

or  watching  at  the  polls.  It  is  a  shame  that  the  peaceable 
home-loving  citizen  should  have  to  be  dragged  into  this 
business  of  politics,  which  ought  to  be  left  to  experts  td 
manage;  but  at  present  there  seems  no  help  for  it  in  most 
communities. 

(2)  An  important  service  lies  in  joining  or  forming  local 
branches  of  the  leagues  which  now  exist  for  the  pushing  of 
specific  political  measures,  for  the  investigation  and  publica- 
tion of  impartial  records  of  candidates,  or  for  the  investiga- 
tion of  the  expenditures  and  results  of  administrations. 
Under  the  first  head  we  may  classify,  for  example,  the 
National  Short  Ballot  Organization;  under  the  second  head 
the  Good  Government  Association,  that  makes  it  its  business 
to  send  to  each  voter  in  a  community  a  printed  statement  of 
the  past  history  of  each  candidate  for  office,  including  the 
record  of  his  vote  on  important  matters;  under  the  third 
head  there  are  the  Bureaus  of  Municipal  Research.  The  New 
York  Bureau,  incorporated  in  1907,  conducts  a  yearly 
budget  exhibit  that  shows  graphically  what  is  being  done 
with  the  money  raised  by  taxation.  Inefficiency  and  corrup- 
tion are  ferreted  out,  waste  is  demonstrated,  suggestions  are 
made  for  economy,  for  the  improvement  of  administration 
in  every  detail,  and  the  amelioration  of  evil  social  conditions. 
By  its  determined  publicity  it  can  do  much  to  energize  and 
modernize  city  government.^ 

(3)  The  outlook  for  clean  and  public-spirited  young  men, 
with  expert  knowledge  and  ideals,  who  wish  to  enter  a 
political  career,  is  gradually  becoming  more  encouraging. 
The  reformer  in  politics  must  be  not  merely  an  idealist,  but 
a  man  who  can  do  things.  He  must  show  his  constituents 
that  reform  government  serves  them  better  than  the  ring- 
sters.   Reform  tactics  have  too  often  been  negative;  bribery 

^  Cf .  World's  Work,  vol.  23,  p.  683.  National  Municipal  Review,  vol.  2^ 
p.  48. 


830  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

and  corruption  have  been  stopped,  but  no  positive  measures 
for  social  welfare  have  been  passed.  To  be  successful,  a 
politician  must  show  the  people  that  he  understands  and  is 
able  to  satisfy  their  needs.  More  effective  than  any  moral 
house-cleaning  in  securing  the  tenure  of  an  administration  is 
its  eflBciency  in  promoting  better  living  and  working  condi- 
tions, improving  opportunities  for  recreation  and  education, 
or  loosening  the  clutch  of  the  predatory  "interests."  More- 
over, the  politician  must  be  a  good  mixer,  willing  to  work 
with  those  who  do  not  share  his  idealism,  good-natured  and 
conciliatory,  ready  to  postpone  the  accomplishment  of  much 
that  he  has  at  heart  in  order  to  get  something  done.  As 
organization  is  in  most  matters  necessary  for  effectiveness, 
he  must  usually  work  with  a  party,  do  a  lot  of  distasteful 
detail  work,  and  make  compromises  for  the  sake  of  agree- 
ments. Happily,  there  are  now  several  liberal  journals  that 
vigorously  urge  the  application  of  morals  to  politics;  and 
the  growing  movement  in  the  cities  toward  seeking  experts 
to  manage  their  affairs  gives  hope  that  the  way  will  soon  be 
generally  open  for  men  of  scientific  training  and  high  ideals 
in  political  life. 

What  legislative  checks  to  corruption  are  possible? 

It  is,  of  course,  an  unnatural  situation  when  the  ordinary 
citizen  has  to  spend  a  lot  of  time  and  effort  if  he  would  guard 
against  being  misgoverned.  He  ought  to  be  able  to  tend  to 
his  own  affairs  and  leave  the  machinery  of  government  to 
those  who  have  been  trained  to  it  and  whose  business  it  is. 
And  while  no  political  mechanism  will  ever  wholly  run  itself, 
without  watchfulness  on  the  part  of  the  people,  experience 
shows  clearly  that  it  is  possible  by  a  wise  system  to  make 
corruption  much  more  difficult  and  more  easily  checked. 
We  Americans  arc  beginning  to  awake  from  our  complacent 
self-gratulation  and  realize  that  our  political  machinery  is 


POLITICAL  PURITY  AND  EFFICIENCY  331 

clumsy  and  antiquated  and  a  standing  invitation  to  inejBS- 
ciency.  The  discussion  of  the  relative  advantages  of  legisla- 
tive schemes  belongs  to  the  science  of  government  rather 
than  to  ethics;  but  their  bearing  upon  public  morality  is  so 
important  that  certain  typical  movements  must  be  explained. 
The  stages  by  which  the  advanced  form  of  popular  govern- 
ment which  we  have  now  attained  has  been  reached  need 
not,  for  our  purposes,  be  considered  —  the  extension  of 
suffrage  to  the  masses,  government  by  representatives, 
registration  laws,  the  secret  ballot,  and  the  like.  We  need 
only  discuss  several  reforms  now  being  agitated  and  tried, 
whose  aim  is  to  make  government  more  responsive  to  the 
real  wishes  and  needs  of  the  people,  and  more  difficult  of 
usurpation  by  selfish  interests. 

I.  We  may  first  speak  of  several  reforms  whose  aim  is  to 
improve  our  mechanism  of  election,  in  order  that  merit, 
rather  than  "pull,"  shall  lead  to  office,  and  that  officials 
shall  represent  the  people  rather  than  the  political  rings. 
It  is  not  generally  true  that  good  and  able  men  are  unwilling 
to  accept  public  office;  what  they  are  unwilling  to  do  is  to 
truckle  to  bosses,  to  do  all  the  questionable  things  that  will 
keep  them  in  with  the  ring,  or  to  spend  large  sums  of  money 
in  advertising  their  claims  to  the  public.  So  thoroughly 
have  pohtical  machines  entrenched  themselves  that  it  is 
often  practically  useless  for  any  one  to  oppose  the  machine 
candidate.  Appointees  receive  their  positions  for  '*  pohtical 
services"  rendered,  or  in  return  for  a  "campaign  contribu- 
tion" for  which  they  may  hope  to  recoup  themselves  when 
in  office.  To  destroy  utterly  this  political  "graft"  will  be 
impossible  until  human  nature  becomes  more  generally 
moralized;  but  to  render  it  more  difficult  and  less  common 
is  the  purpose  of  a  number  of  measures,  of  which  we  may 
mention  the  following :  — 

(1)  Civil  service  laics.    These  require  appointments  to 


832  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

office,  made  by  officials,  to  be  made  on  the  basis  of  com- 
petitive examinations  which  shall  test  the  ability  and 
knowledge  of  the  applicants.  By  this  means,  within  a  gen- 
eration, tens  of  thousands  of  positions  have  been  put  beyond 
the  reach  of  spoilsmen,  and  men  of  worth  have  replaced 
political  henchmen.  Instead  of  a  great  overturn  with  every 
new  political  regime,  the  man  who  has  now  fairly  won  his  po- 
sition retains  it  for  life,  except  in  case  of  proved  inefficiency. 
The  quality  of  the  public  service  has  been  immeasurably 
improved,  the  subservience  of  office-holders  to  political 
chiefs  aboUshed.^  But  there  are  still  many  thousands  of 
offices  that  have  not  been  brought  within  the  civil  service, 
and  there  are  continual  attempts  on  the  part  of  politicians 
to  withdraw  from  it  this  or  that  class  of  appointments,  that 
they  may  have  "plums"  to  offer  their  constituents. 

To  the  most  important  positions  the  civil  service  method 
is,  however,  inapplicable;  imagine  a  President  having  to 
appoint  as  his  Secretary  of  State  the  man  who  passed  the 
best  examination  in  diplomacy!  So  many  other  considera- 
tions affect  the  availability  of  a  man  for  such  posts  that  the 
elected  officials  must  be  given  a  free  hand  in  their  choice 
and  held  responsible  therefor  to  the  people.  These  impor- 
tant appointees  will  be  enough  in  the  public  eye  to  make  it 
usually  expedient  for  the  career  of  the  appointers  that  they 
pick  reasonably  honest  and  able  men  —  especially  if  the 
recall  (of  which  we  shall  presently  speak)  is  in  operation. 

(2)  The  short  ballot.  As  our  government  has  grown  more 
and  more  complex,  the  number  of  officials  for  whom  the 
citizen  must  vote  has  increased,  with  the  result  that  he  has 
to  decide  in  many  cases  amon^  rival  candidates  about  none 
of  whom  he  knows  anything  definitely.  For  four  or  five 
offices  he   can  be   fairly  expected   to   form  an  individual 

*  See  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  113,  p.  270.  National  Municipal  RevieiOi 
vol.  1,  p.  654;  vol.  3,  p.  316. 


POLITICAL  PURITY  AND  EFFICIENCY  333 

opinion  as  to  the  merits  of  the  candidates  in  the  field;  but 
to  investigate  or  remember  the  relative  merits  and  demerits 
of  a  score  or  more  is  more  than  the  average  voter  will  do. 
So  he  may  "scratch"  his  party's  candidate  for  governor  or 
mayor,  but  usually  votes  the  ''straight  ticket"  for  the  minor 
officials.  This  works  too  well  into  the  hands  of  the  political 
machines.  The  obvious  remedy  is  to  give  him  only  a  few 
officers  to  vote  for  and  to  require  the  remaining  offices  to  be 
filled  by  appointment  instead  of  election. 

By  this  method,  not  only  is  the  voter  saved  from  needless 
confusion  and  enabled  to  concentrate  his  attention  upon  the 
few  big  offices,  but  the  responsibility  for  misgovernment  is 
far  more  clearly  fixed,  and  the  possibility  of  remedying  it 
made  much  easier.  If  a  dozen  state  officials  are  elected,  the 
average  citizen  is  uncertain  who  is  to  blame  for  inefficiency; 
each  official  shoves  the  responsibility  on  to  the  others* 
shoulders,  and  it  is  not  plain  what  can  be  done  except  to 
depose  them  all,  one  by  one.  If  a  governor  only  is  elected, 
and  is  required  to  appoint  his  subordinates,  the  entire  blame 
rests  upon  his  shoulders.  If  dishonesty  or  maladministra- 
tion is  discovered,  he  must  take  the  shame;  he  may  be 
recalled  from  office  if  he  is  not  quick  enough  in  removing  the 
guilty  man  and  remedying  the  evil. 

Further,  the  right  to  choose  his  own  subordinates  makes 
the  work  of  the  chief  much  easier,  brings  a  unity  of  purpose 
into  an  administration  which  is  likely  to  be  absent  when  a 
number  of  different  men,  simultaneously  elected,  perhaps 
representing  different  parties,  have  to  work  together.  The 
increased  power  and  responsibility  of  the  chief  offices  attract 
able  men,  men  of  ideals  and  training,  who  do  not  care  for 
an  office  whose  power  is  limited  by  that  of  various  machine 
politicians  who,  they  know,  will  hamper  them  on  every  side 
in  their  efforts  for  efficient  administration.  And,  apart  from 
this  consideration,  a  man  able  enough  to  win  election  as 


834  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

governor  is  a  far  better  judge  of  the  men  best  fitted  for  the 
various  technical  duties  that  fall  to  his  subordinates  than  is 
the  general  public.  Experience  shows  that  the  men  chosen 
by  chiefs  who  are  elected  and  held  responsible  to  the  people 
are  generally  abler  than  those  elected  to  the  same  positions 
by  popular  vote. 

The  present  movement  toward  a  short  ballot,  with  respon- 
sibihty  clearly  defined  and  concentrated,  will  doubtless  do 
away  ultimately  with  the  clumsy  systems  by  which  both 
States  and  cities  in  this  country  are  now  governed  —  the 
two-chambered  legislatures,  with  their  inevitable  friction 
betwixt  themselves  and  with  the  executive.  This  method  of 
checks  and  counter-checks  was  thought  necessary  as  a  safe- 
guard against  tyranny,  the  bugbear  of  our  forefathers,  but 
is  now  the  enemy  of  efliciency  and  the  haunt  of  corruption. 
The  much  simpler  commission  form  of  government,  which, 
originating  in  Galveston  and  Des  Moines  a  few  years  ago, 
has  already,  at  date  of  writing,  been  adopted  by  over  three 
hundred  cities,  substitutes  for  the  usual  executive  and  legis- 
lative branches  a  small  group  of  elected  oflicials  —  com- 
monly five  —  who,  with  the  aid  of  appointed  subordinates, 
carry  on  the  whole  business  of  the  city.  Some  such  plan  may 
eventually  be  adopted  for  states,  and  even  for  the  national 
government.^ 

(3)  Direct  'primaries.  Experience  has  shown  that  the 
caucus  or  convention  system  of  making  nominations  for 
office  plays  directly  into  the  hands  of  the  machine;  its  prac- 
tical result  has  been  that  the  voter  is  usually  restricted  in  his 

^  R.  S.  Childs,  Short  Ballot  Principles,  Story  of  the  Short  Ballot  Cities. 
C.  A.  Beard,  Loose  Leaf  Digest  of  Short  Ballot  Charters.  Free  literature  of  the 
National  Short  Ballot  Organization  (383  Fourth  Avenue,  New  York  City). 
C.  R.  Woodruff,  City  Government  by  Commission.  E.  S.  Bradford,  Com- 
mission Government  in  American  Cities.  National  Municipal  Review,  vol.  1, 
pp.  40,  170,  372,  562;  vol.  2,  p.  661.  The  American  City,  vol.  9,  p.  236. 
Outlook,  vol.  92,  pp.  635,  829;  vol.  99,  p.  362.  Forum,  vol.  51,  p.  354. 


POLITICAL  PURITY  AND  EFFICIENCY  S35 

choice  to  candidates  who  are  equally  the  nominees  of  the 
bosses  and  the  "interests."  The  direct  primary  gives  the 
independent  candidate  his  opportunity,  and  makes  it  more 
practicable  for  honest  citizens  to  determine  between  what 
candidates  the  final  choice  shall  lie.  It  implies  effort  on  the 
part  of  the  candidate  to  make  himself  known  to  the  voters; 
but  such  effort  there  must  always  be,  unless  the  candidate  is 
already  a  conspicuous  figure,  in  order  that  the  citizen  may 
have  grounds  for  his  decision.  It  has  in  some  places  led  to 
an  exorbitant  expenditure  for  self-advertisement;  but  this 
expenditure  can  be  pretty  well  controlled  by  legislation. 
The  argument  that  it  does  away  with  the  deliberation  possi- 
ble in  a  caucus  wears  the  aspect  of  a  joke,  in  view  of  the  sort 
of  deliberation  the  caucus  has  in  practice  encouraged;  and 
discussion  does,  of  course,  take  place  in  the  public  press, 
which  is  the  modern  forum.  It  is  possible,  however,  that 
some  modified  form  of  the  direct  primary  plan  may  be 
better  still,  such  as  the  Hughes  plan,  which  provided  for  the 
election  at  each  primary  of  a  party  committee  to  present 
carefully  discussed  nominations  for  the  following  year's 
primary  to  approve  or  reject.^ 

(4)  Preferential  voting.  A  more  radical  movement  would 
abolish  primaries  altogether  and  settle  elections  upon  one 
day  by  preferential  voting.  The  voter  indicates  his  second 
choices,  and  any  further  choices  he  may  care  to  indicate.  If 
no  candidate  receives  a  majority  of  first  choices,  the  first 
and  second  choices  are  added  together;  if  necessary,  the 
third  choices.  In  this  way  the  danger,  so  often  realized,  of  a 
split  vote  and  the  election  of  a  minority  candidate,  will  be 
banished;  it  will  no  longer  be  possible  for  a  machine  candi- 
date, actually  the  least  desired  of  all  the  candidates  by  a 

*  See  Outlook,  vol.  90,  p.  382;  vol.  95,  p.  507.  North  American  Review,  voL 
190,  p.  1.  Arena,  vol.  35,  p.  587;  vol.  36,  p.  52;  vol.  41,  p.  550.  Forum,  vol 
42,  p.  493.  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  110,  p.  41. 


336  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

majority  of  the  people,  to  win  a  plurality  over  the  divided 
forces  of  opposition.  The  real  wishes  of  tlie  voter  can  he 
discovered  and  obeyed  more  readily  than  with  our  present 
troublesome  and  expensive  system  of  double  elections.^ 

(5)  Proportional  representation.  By  means  of  preferential 
voting  it  is  possible  to  make  representative  bodies  a  mirror 
not  of  the  majority  party,  but  of  the  real  divisions  of  opinion 
in  a  community.  One  of  the  great  evils  in  our  present  system 
of  majority  rule  is  the  suppression  of  the  wishes  of  the 
minority  —  which  may  amount  to  nearly  half  the  com- 
munity.^ Strong  parties  may  go  for  many  years  without  any 
representation,  or  with  representation  quite  disproportion- 
ate to  their  numbers.  By  the  method  of  proportional  repre- 
sentation, every  man's  vote  counts,  and  every  considerable 
body  of  opinion  an  send  its  representative  to  council.  Men 
of  marked  persoaaUty,  who  have  aroused  too  great  hostility 
to  make  them  safe  candidates  as  we  vote  to-day,  because 
they  would  be  unlikely  to  win  a  majority,  can  get  a  constitu- 
ency sufficient  to  elect  them,  while  the  harmless  nobody, 
elected  to-day  only  to  avoid  a  feared  rival,  will  have  less 
chance.  The  evil  gerrymander  will  be  abolished,  and  repre- 
sentative bodies  will  be  divided  along  party  lines  in  the  very 
proportions  in  which  the  people  are  divided. 

Moreover,  since  on  this  plan  every  vote  counts,  the  great- 
est source  of  political  apathy  will  be  removed  —  that  sense 
of  hopelessness  which  paralyzes  the  efforts  of  the  members 
of  a  minority  party.  Corruption  will  hardly  pay ;  for  whereas 
at  present  the  boss  has  but  to  win  the  comparatively  few 
votes  necessary  to  swing  the  balance  toward  a  bare  majority, 
in  order  to  have  complete  control,  he  will  upon  this  plan 
secure  control  only  in  actual  proportion  to  the  number  of 
votes  he  can  secure. 

*  National  Municipal  Renew,  vol.  1,  p.  386;  vol.  3,  pp.  49,  83. 
2  Cf.  Unpopular  Review,  vol.  1,  p.  22. 


POLITICAL  PURITY  AND  EFFICIENCY  337 

Another  advantage  of  the  system  lies  in  the  stabler  policy 
it  will  ensure.  Our  present  system  results  in  frequent  sharp 
overturns,  according  as  this  party  or  that  may  get  a  tempo- 
rary majority.  But  this  battledore  and  shuttlecock  of 
legislation  does  not  represent  the  far  more  gradual  changes 
in  public  opinion.  A  system  whereby  the  number  of  repre- 
sentatives of  each  party  is  always  directly  proportioned  to 
the  number  of  votes  cast  for  that  party  would  make  it 
possible  to  evolve  a  careful  machinery  of  government,  as  is 
not  possible  with  our  periodic  upheavals  and  reversals  of 
personnel  and  policy.^ 

(6)  The  separation  of  national  state,  and  local  issues.  The 
obtrusion  of  national  party  lines  into  state  and  municipal 
affairs  has  continually  confused  issues  and  blocked  reforms 
in  the  narrower  spheres.  Masses  of  voters  will  support  a 
candidate  for  governor  or  mayor  simply  because  he  is  a 
Republican  or  Democrat,  although  the  national  party 
issues  in  no  way  enter  into  the  campaign.  Bosses  skillfully 
play  on  this  blind  party  allegiance,  and  many  a  scoundrel  or 
incompetent  has  ridden  into  office  under  the  party  banner. 
The  separation  of  local  from  national  elections  has  proved 
itself  a  necessity;  in  the  most  advanced  communities  they 
are  now  put  in  different  years,  that  the  loyalties  evoked  by 
one  campaign  may  not  carry  over  blindly  into  another.  The 
direct  election  of  United  States  Senators  has  this  great  ad- 
vantage, among  others,  of  separating  issues;  in  former  days 
the  alternative  was  often  forced  upon  the  citizen  of  voting 
for  a  state  legislator  who  stood  for  measures  of  which  he  dis- 
approved, or  of  voting  for  a  better  legislator  who  would  not 
vote  for  the  United  States  Senator  he  wished  to  see  elected. 

^  See  publications  of  the  American  Proportional  Representation  League 
(Secretary  C,  G.  Hoag,  Haverford,  Pennsylvania).  National  Municipal 
Review,  vol.  3,  p.  92.  American  City,  vol.  10,  p.  319.  Thomas  Hare, 
Representation.  J.  S.  Mill,  Representative  Government,  chap.  vii.  Political 
Science  Quarterly,  vol.  29,  p.  111.  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  112,  p.  610. 


338  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

(7)  Space  forbids  the  further  discussion  of  reforms  that 
aim  at  improving  the  machinery  of  election.  The  value  of 
anti-bribery  laws  is  obvious,  as  of  the  laws  that  require 
publicity  of  campaign  accounts,  forbid  campaign  contribu- 
tions by  corporations,  and  limit  the  legal  expenditures  of 
individuals.^  The  publication  at  public  expense  and  sending 
to  every  voter  of  a  pamphlet  giving  in  his  own  words  the 
arguments  on  the  strength  of  which  each  candidate  seeks 
election  has  recently  been  tried  in  the  West.  But  this  is  sure, 
that  in  one  way"  or  other  the  American  people  will  evolve  a 
mechanism  which  will  make  it  easier  for  able  and  honest 
men  to  attain  office  than  for  the  rogues  and  their  incompe- 
tent henchmen. 

II.  A  second  set  of  reforms  bears  rather  upon  the  quality 
of  legislation  than  upon  the  selection  of  men  for  office.  It  is 
not  enough  that  the  way  be  made  easy  for  good  men  to 
attain  office;  they  must,  when  elected,  be  freed  from  needless 
temptations  and  given  every  inducement  to  work  for  the 
interests  of  the  community  they  represent.  Every  possible 
pressure  is  valuable  that  can  counteract  the  pull  of  sectional 
interests,  party  interests,  or  the  interests  of  the  great  corpo- 
rations, away  from  the  general  welfare.  For  even  the  best- 
intentioned  officials  may  yield  to  the  insistence  of  local  or 
partisan  wishes,  to  the  arguments  of  "big  business,"  or  to 
the  lure  of  personal  advantage. 

(1)  Representation  at  large.  The  method  of  legislation  by 
representatives  of  local  districts  leads  inevitably  to  laws  that 
are  a  compromise  or  bargain  between  the  interests  of  the 
several  districts,  rather  than  the  result  of  a  desire  to  further 
the  best  interests  of  the  entire  community.  Congressmen  are 
continually  beset  by  their  constituents  to  secure  special  fa- 
vors  for  them,  aldermen  are  expected  to  push  the  interests 
of  their  respective  wards.  Each  representative  stands  in 
»  Cf.  Outlook,  vol.  81,  p.  549. 


POLITICAL  PURITY  AND   EFFICIENCY  339 

danger  of  political  suicide  if  he  refuses  to  use  his  influence 
for  these  often  improper  ends;  and  legislation  takes  the  form 
of  a  quid  pro  quo:  —  "You  vote  for  this  bill  which  my 
section  desires,  and  I'll  vote  for  the  bill  yours  demands.** 
This  evil  is  so  great  that  it  may  be  necessary  eventually  to 
do  away  entirely  with  district  representation.^ 

(2)  Delegated  government.  Another  plan,  which  evades  the 
pressure  of  local  interests  while  allowing  district  representa- 
tion, also  avoids  the  friction  and  deadlocks  which  result 
from  government  by  a  group  of  representatives  of  sharply 
opposed  parties  or  principles.  By  this  plan,  a  representative 
body  is  elected,  by  districts,  or  at  large,  by  proportional 
representation;  but  this  body,  instead  of  itself  deciding  or 
executing  the  state  or  municipal  policy,  serves  merely  to 
select  and  watch  experts,  who  carry  on  the  various  phases  of 
government.  These  experts  remain  responsible  to  the  repre- 
sentatives, who  in  turn  are  responsible  to  the  people.  This 
method  promises  to  combine  concentration  of  responsibility, 
efficiency,  and  business-like  government,  with  democracy^ 
that  is,  responsiveness  to  popular  control.  The  national 
Congress  may,  for  example,  appoint  a  commission  of  experts 
on  the  tariff,  agreeing  to  consider  no  tariff  legislation  except 
such  as  they  recommend;  in  this  way  they  are  freed  from  all 
requests  to  propose  this  or  that  alteration  in  the  interests 
of  their  State  or  one  of  its  industries,  while  the  commission- 
ers, not  being  responsible  to  any  localities,  are  under  no 
pressure  to  yield  to  such  requests.  Similarly,  the  right  to 
recommend  —  or  even  to  enact  —  legislation  on  pensions, 
on  river  and  harbor  appropriations,  or  what  not,  may  be 
delegated  to  an  appointed  body  responsible  only  to  the 
Congress  at  large;  and  all  the  "pork-barrel"  legislation, 
which  the  better  class  of  legislators  hate,  but  which  is 

1  See  Outlook,  voL  95,  p.  759. 


340  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

forced  upon  them  by  the  threat  of  political  ruin,  may  be 
obviated.^ 

The  plan  of  delegating  power  to  appointed  experts  has 
very  recently  been  winning  approval  in  municipal  govern- 
ment, where  it  is  commonly  called  the  "  City  Manager  "  plan. 
A  small  body  of  commissioners  are  elected  and  held  respon- 
sible for  the  city  government;  these  men  may  remain  in  their 
private  vocations,  and  draw  a  comparatively  small  salary 
from  the  city.  Their  duty  is  to  select  an  expert  city  manager 
who  will  receive  a  high  salary,  and  conduct  personally  and 
through  his  appointees  the  whole  business  of  the  city.  The 
commissioners  may  dismiss  him  if  his  work  is  not  satisfac- 
tory and  engage  another  to  take  his  place.  Responsibility  is 
concentrated;  mismanagement  can  be  stopped  at  once,  more 
readily  even  than  by  the  recall;  unity  and  continuity  of 
policy  become  possible;  in  short,  the  same  successful 
methods  that  have  made  American  business  the  admiration 
of  the  world  can  be  applied  to  politics.  If  this  plan  becomes 
widely  adopted,  as  it  bids  fair  to  be,  politics  can  become  a 
trained  profession,  and  we  can  be  governed  by  experts 
instead  of  by  politicians.^ 

(3)  The  recall.  Many  of  the  newer  plans  for  government 
include  a  method  by  which  an  inefficient  or  dishonest  official 
can  be  removed  from  office  by  the  people,  without  the  cum- 
bersome process  of  an  impeachment.  It  would  not  be  wise 
to  apply  the  recall  to  local  representatives,  who  would  then 
be  still  more  at  the  mercy  of  local  wishes;  but  with  a  short 
ballot  and  the  concentration  of  responsibihty  upon  execu- 

*  Cf.  the  new  (1914)  Public  Health  Council  of  six  members,  in  New  York 
State,  to  whom  has  been  delegated  all  power  to  make  and  enforce  laws 
bearing  upon  the  public  health  throughout  the  State  (except  in  New  York 
City).  See  World's  Work,  vol.  27,  p.  495. 

2  See  The  City  Manager  Plan  of  Municipal  Government  (printed  by  the 
National  Short  Ballot  Organization).  National  Municipal  Review,  vol.  1, 
pp.  33,  549;  vol.  2,  pp.  7G,  639;  vol.  3,  p.  44.  Outlook,  vol.  104,  p.  887. 


POLITICAL   PURITY  AND  EFFICIENCY  341 

tives  or  small  commissions  who  represent  the  community 
as  a  whole,  it  is  highly  desirable  to  have  a  method  available 
for  quickly  remedying  mistakes.  The  danger  of  being  recalled 
from  oflSce  is  a  salutary  influence  upon  a  weak  or  a  self- 
willed  man.  And  the  possibility  of  it  allows  the  election  of 
oflBcials  for  longer  terms,  which  are  desirable  from  several 
points  of  view:  they  bring  a  more  stable  government,  freed 
from  too  frequent  breaks  or  reversals  of  policy;  they  permit 
the  acquiring  of  a  longer  pohtical  experience,  and  stimulate 
abler  men  to  run  for  office;  they  save  the  public  the  bother 
and  expense  of  too  frequent  elections.^ 

(4)  The  referendum.  A  less  drastic  instrument  of  popular 
control  over  legislation  is  the  referendum,  which  refers 
individual  measures  back  to  the  people  for  approval  or 
rejection.  An  official  may  be  efficient  and  free  from  corrup- 
tion, yet  opposed  to  the  general  wish  on  some  particular 
matter.  In  this,  then,  he  may  be  overruled  by  the  referen- 
dum without  being  humiliated  or  required  to  resign  his  office. 
Thus  not  only  the  improper  influence  of  the  machine  or  the 
interests  may  be  guarded  against  by  the  public,  but  the 
unconscious  prejudices  of  generally  efficient  officials.  Of 
course  there  is,  in  the  case  of  both  recall  and  referendum, 
the  possibility  that  the  official  may  be  right  and  the  people 
wrong.  But  that  danger  is  inherent  in  democratic  govern- 
ment. The  best  that  can  be  done  is  to  make  government 
responsive  to  the  sober  judgment  of  the  majority;  if  that  i£ 
mistaken,  nothing  but  time  and  education  can  correct  it.^ 

The  air  is  full  of  suggestions,  and  experiments  are  being 

*  See  National  Municipal  Review,  vol.  1,  p.  204.  Forum,  vol.  47,  p.  157. 
North  American  Review,  vol.  198,  p.  145. 

'  See  W.  B.  Munro,  The  Initiative,  Referendum  and  Recall;  The  Govern- 
ment of  American  Cities,  p.  321  ff.  Political  Science  Quarterly,  vol.  26, 
p.  415;  vol.  28,  p.  207.  National  Municipal  Review,  vol.  1,  p.  580.  Nation, 
vol.  95,  p.  324. 


842  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

tried  in  every  direction.  There  is  every  hope  that  America 
may  yet  learn  by  her  failures  and  evolve  a  system  of  govern- 
ment that  shall  be  her  pride  rather  than  her  shame.  Our 
National  Government  has  worked  far  better  than  our  state 
jind  local  government,  but  even  that  can  be  further  freed  from 
the  pull  of  improper  motives,  made  much  more  efficient  and 
responsive  to  the  general  will.  We  are  in  a  peculiar  degree 
on  trial  to  show  what  popular  government  can  accomplish. 
The  Old  World  looks  to  us  with  distrust,  but  with  hop>e.  And 
though  the  solution  of  our  political  problem  involves  many 
technical  matters,  it  has  deep  underlying  moral  bearings, 
and  affects  profoundly  the  success  of  every  great  moral 
campaign. 

R.  C.  Brooks,  Corruption  in  American  Politics  and  Life.  L. 
Steffens,  The  Shame  of  the  Cities.  J.  Bryce,  The  Hindrances  to  Good 
Government.  W.  E.  Weyl,  The  New  Democracy,  chaps,  vm,  ix. 
Jane  Addams,  Democracy  and  Social  Ethics,  chap.  vti.  A.  T. 
Hadley,  Standards  of  Public  Morality,  chaps,  iv,  v.  T.  Roosevelt, 
American  Ideals.  C.  R.  Henderson,  The  Social  Spirit  in  America, 
chap.  XI.  Edmond  Kelly,  Evolution  and  Effort,  chap.  ix.  W.  H. 
Taft,  Four  Aspects  of  Civic  Duty.  E.  Root,  The  Citizen's  Part  in 
Government.  D.  F.  Wilcox,  Government  by  All  the  People.  L.  S. 
Rowe,  Problems  of  City  Government.  H.  E.  Deming,  The  Govern- 
ment of  American  Cities.  Publications  of  the  National  Municipal 
League  (703  North  American  Building,  Philadelphia).  Political 
Science  Quarterly,  vol.  18,  p.  188;  vol.  19,  p.  673;  vol.  24,  p.  1.  G. 
Wallas,  Human  Nature  in  Politics.  W.  Lippmann,  Preface  to  Poli- 
tics. A.  M.  Kales,  Unpopular  Government  in  the  United  States.  C.  C. 
P.  Clark,  The  Machine  Abolished.  J.  E.  Hedges,  Common  Sense  in 
Politics.  G.  D.  H.  Cole,  Social  Theory, 


CHAPTER  XXV 

SOCIAL  ALLEVIATION 

When  the  security  of  peace  and  an  efficient  government 
are  attained,  the  way  Hes  open  for  the  amehoration  of  social 
evils.  Freedom  from  war  and  from  political  corruption  are 
but  the  pre-conditions  of  social  advance,  which  must  con- 
sist in  three  things :  the  healing  of  existing  ills,  the  reorganiza- 
tion of  society  to  prevent  the  recurrence  of  similar  ills,  and 
the  bringing  of  new  opportunities  and  joys  to  the  people. 
Our  first  step,  then,  is  to  consider  social  therapeutics  —  the 
palliation  of  present  suffering,  the  redressing  of  existing 
wrongs;  however  we  may  seek,  by  radical  readjustments,  to 
strike  at  the  roots  of  these  evils,  we  must  not  fail  to  mitigate, 
as  best  we  can,  the  lot  of  those  who  are  the  unfortunate 
victims  of  our  still  crude  social  organization.  The  detailed 
study  of  social  ills  and  their  remedies  has  come  to  be  a  science 
by  itself,  and  a  science  that  calls  for  close  attention;  for 
there  is  more  good  will  than  insight  afield,  and  nothing 
demands  more  wisdom  and  experience  than  the  permanent 
curing  of  social  sores.  But  it  falls  to  ethics  to  note  the  gen- 
eral duties  and  opportunities,  to  point  out  the  responsibility 
of  the  individual  citizen  for  wrongs  which  he  is  not  helping 
to  right,  and  to  direct  him  to  the  great  moral  causes  in  one 
or  more  of  which  an  increasing  number  of  our  educated  men 
and  women  are  enrolling  themselves.  A  questionnaire 
recently  sent  out  by  the  author  of  this  book  discloses  the 
fact  that  over  half  the  college  graduates  of  this  country  have 
given  time  and  money  to  one  or  more  of  the  campaigns  which 


344  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

are  being  waged  for  social  betterment.^  These  evils  which 
it  is  the  duty  of  the  State  to  try  to  remedy  we  shall  now 
consider. 

What  is  the  duty  of  the  State  in  regard  to : 

/.  Sickness  and  preventable  death?  Physical  ills  are  the 
unavoidable  lot  of  the  human  race;  but  by  no  means  to  the 
extent  to  which  they  now  prevail.  A  very  large  percentage 
of  existing  sickness  and  infirmity  could  have  been  prevented 
by  a  timely  application  of  such  knowledge  as  the  intelligent 
already  possess.  It  is  the  poverty,  the  crowded  and  unsan- 
itary living  conditions,  the  ignorance  and  helplessness  of 
the  masses,  that  perpetuate  all  this  unnecessary  suffering, 
this  economic  waste,  this  drag  on  human  efficiency  and 
happiness.  Not  only  from  humanitarian  motives,  but  also 
from  regard  for  national  prosperity  and  virility,  it  behooves 
the  State  to  wage  war  against  preventable  illness  and  safe- 
guard the  general  health. 

How  shocking  conditions  are,  in  view  of  the  sanitary  and 
medical  knowledge  we  now  possess,  we  are  not  apt  to  realize. 
It  is  estimated  that  of  the  three  million  or  so  who  are  seri- 
ously ill  in  this  country  on  any  average  day,  more  than  half 
might  have  been  kept  well  by  the  enforcement  of  proper 
precautions;  that  of  the  1,500,000  deaths  that  occur  annu- 
ally in  the  United  States,  nearly  half  could  have  been  post- 
poned. Tuberculosis,  for  example,  is  not  a  highly  contagious 
or  rapid  disease;  it  is  absolutely  preventable  by  measures 
now  understood,  and  almost  always  curable  in  its  earliest 
stages.  Yet  half  a  million  peoj^le  in  our  country  are  suffering 
from  it,  and  about  130,000  die  of  it  annually.  Typhoid, 
which  could  readily  be  as  nearly  eradicated  as  smallpox  has 
been,  claims  some  30,000  victims   annually.    It  has  been 

*  Some  of  the  results  of  this  questionnaire  were  published  in  the  7ndo 
^ndent  for  August  5,  1913,  vol.  75,  p.  348. 


SOCIAL  ALLEVIATION  345 

estimated  by  various  statisticians  that  the  nation  could 
save  a  billion  dollars  a  year  through  postponing  deaths,  and 
at  least  half  as  much  again  by  preventing  illness  that  does 
not  result  fatally.  Tuberculosis  alone  is  said  to  cost  the 
country  half  a  billion  annually,  typhoid  over  three  hundred 
million,  and  so  on.  The  cost  in  suffering,  broken  Uves,  and 
broken  hearts  is  beyond  computation. 

There  are  many  different  ways  in  which  the  campaign  for 
public  health  can  be  simultaneously  waged :  — 

(1)  The  enforcement  of  quarantine  laws,  vaccination, 
and  fumigation,  should  be  much  stricter  than  it  is  in  many 
parts  of  the  nation.  By  such  means  the  cholera,  bubonic 
plague,  and  other  terrible  diseases  have  been  practically 
kept  out  of  the  country,  and  smallpox  has  become,  from  one 
of  the  most  dreaded  scourges,  an  almost  neghgible  peril. 
Experience  shows  strikingly  the  advantage  of  isolating 
patients  suffering  from  contagious  diseases ;  here  at  least  the 
State,  in  the  interest  of  the  community  as  a  whole,  must 
sternly  hmit  individual  liberty.  And  it  looks  as  if  we  were 
at  the  threshold  of  an  era  of  "  vaccination  "  for  other  diseases 
besides  smallpox;  typhoid  is  now  absolutely  preventable  by 
that  means,  and  the  number  of  diseases  amenable  to  preven- 
tion or  mitigation  by  similar  methods  is  yearly  increasing. 
In  some  or  all  of  these  cases  there  is  a  slight  risk  to  the 
patient,  in  view  of  which  compulsory  "vaccination"  is  in 
some  quarters  strenuously  opposed.  Leaving  the  discus- 
sion of  the  principle  here  involved  to  chapter  xxviii,  we 
may  confidently  say,  at  least,  that  voluntary  inoculation 
against  diseases  is  an  increasingly  valuable  safeguard  not 
only  for  the  individual  in  question  but  for  the  whole  com- 
munity. 

(2)  Apart  from  state  action,  voluntary  organizations 
formed  to  attack  specific  diseases,  by  spreading  popular 
knowledge  of  preventive  measures,  and  pushing  legislation 


S46  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

for  their  enforcement,  offer  much  promise.  The  Anti- 
Tuberculosis  League  can  already  point  to  a  ten  per  cent  de- 
cline in  the  death-rate  from  that  plague  in  the  decade  from 
1900  to  1910.^  But  while  in  New  York  City  alone  nearly 
thirty  thousand  fresh  victims  are  seized  by  the  disease  every 
year,  a  voluntary  organization  cannot  hope  to  cope  with  the 
situation;  the  power  and  resources  of  the  State  are  needed. 
The  congestion  of  population,  and  the  lack  of  proper  light 
and  air,  which  are  the  greatest  factors,  perhaps,  in  the  spread 
of  the  scourge,  must  be  attacked  by  legislation.  So  typhoid 
must  be  fought  not  only  by  vaccination,  but  by  legislation 
insuring  a  pure  water  supply,  proper  sewage  disposal,  and 
the  protection  of  food  from  contamination.  Measures 
necessary  to  eradicate  that  pest,  the  house  fly,  must  be 
enforced,  the  mosquito  must  be  as  nearly  as  possible  exter- 
minated, streets  and  yards  must  be  kept  clean,  the  smoke 
nuisance  abated,  the  slaughtering  of  animals  and  canning  of 
food  sharply  regulated,  sanitary  conditions  enforced  in 
homes  and  factories.  One  of  the  prerequisites  to  any  marked 
improvement  will  be  the  "taking  out  of  politics"  of  the 
public  health  service  and  making  it  an  expert  profession. 

(3)  Another  service  that  the  community  must  eventually, 
in  its  own  interests,  provide,  is  free  medical  attendance,  by 
really  competent  physicians,  wherever  there  is  need.  With- 
out referring  to  the  suffering  and  anxiety  spared,  the  expense 
of  this  service  will  far  more  than  be  saved  the  State  in  the 
prevention  of  illness  and  premature  death.  The  most  careful 
medical  inspection  of  school  children,  including  attention 
by  experts  to  eyes,  ears,  and  teeth,  is  of  utmost  importance; 
all  sorts  of  ills  can  thus  be  averted  which  the  parents  are 

^  For  methods  and  results  consult  the  Secretary  of  the  National  Associa- 
tion for  the  Study  and  Prevention  of  Tuberculosis,  105  East  Twenty-second 
Street,  New  York  City.  Free  literature  is  sent,  and  information  furnished, 
on  request. 


SOCIAL  ALLEVIATION  S47 

too  ignorant  or  careless  to  forestall.^  It  is  earnestly  to  be 
hoped  that  the  present  chaos  of  medical  education  and  prac- 
tice will  be  soon  reduced  to  a  better  order;  that  practitioners 
who  prefer  manipulation  or  mental  healing,  for  example, 
will,  instead  of  forming  separate  and  antagonistic  schools, 
unite  their  insight  and  experience  with  the  main  stream  of 
scientific  therapeutic  effort.  The  quacks  who  delude  and 
murder  hordes  of  ignorant  victims  must  be,  so  far  as  is  prac- 
ticable, severely  punished;  and  adequate  physiological  and 
medical  education  should  be  required  for  all  practising 
healers,  whatever  methods  they  may  then  choose  to  employ. 

(4)  Besides  free  medical  attendance,  the  State  must  pro- 
vide free  hospitals  for  the  sick,  nurses  for  the  poor,  asylums 
for  those  who  are  incapacitated  by  infirmity  from  self- 
support.  The  care  and  treatment  of  the  feeble-minded,  the 
insane,  the  deaf,  the  blind,  the  crippled,  should  always  be  in 
the  hands  of  experts;  and,  so  far  as  possible,  work  tliat  they 
can  do  must  be  provided.  With  the  enforcement  of  the 
measures  we  have  enumerated,  the  need  of  such  institutions 
will  become  much  less;  but  at  present  they  are  inadequate 
in  number  and  equipment,  too  often  managed  by  incompe- 
tent officials,  and  not  always  free  from  scandal. ^ 

(5)  Most  important  of  all,  perhaps,  is  the  work  that  must 
be  done  to  save  the  babies.  Approximately  a  third  of  the 
babies  born  in  this  country  die  before  they  are  four  years 
old;  half  or  two  thirds  of  these  could  be  saved.  Wonderful 
results  in  baby-saving  have  followed  strict  control  of  the 
milk  supply  and  the  banishing  of  the  fly.  Besides  this, 
mothers  must  in  some  way  be  given  instruction  in  the  very 
difficult  and  complicated  art  of  rearing  infants ;  for  many  of 

*  Consult  the  literature  of  the  American  School  Hygiene  Association 
(Secretary  T.  A.  Storey,  College  of  the  City  of  New  York).  L.  D.  Cruick- 
shank.  School  Clinics  at  Ilome  and  Abroad.  Outlook,  vol.  84,  p.  C62. 

*  Cf.  C.  R.  Henderson,  Social  Spirit  in  America^  chap.  xv. 


848  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

tlie  deaths  are  due  to  simple  ignorance.^  Povertjs  the  neces- 
sity of  self -support  on  the  part  of  mothers,  also  plays  a  large 
part;  we  shall  consider  in  chapter  xxx  the  possibiUty  of 
state  care  of  mothers  during  the  infancy  of  their  children. 

II.  Poverty  and  inadequate  living  conditions  ?  If  human 
illness  can  be  in  large  measure  averted  by  state  action, 
poverty  can  be  practically  abolished.  The  poor  we  have 
always  had  with  us,  indeed;  but  we  need  not  forever  have 
them.  There  is  no  excuse  for  our  tolerance  of  the  suffering 
and  degradation  of  the  submerged  classes;  the  causes  of  this 
wretchedness  are  in  the  main  removable.  The  initial  cost 
will  be  great,  but  in  the  long  run  the  saving  to  the  commun- 
ity will  be  enormous.  Individual  effort  can  only  achieve  a 
superficial  and  temporary  relief;  and  even  the  two  or  three 
hundred  charity  organization  societies  in  the  country  are 
impotent,  for  lack  of  funds  and  of  power,  to  stem  the  forces 
that  make  for  poverty.  To  dole  out  charity  to  this  family 
and  to  that  is  unhappily  necessary  in  our  present  crude  social 
situation;  but  it  is  not  a  solution.  It  not  only  runs  the  con- 
tinual risk  of  encouraging  shiftlessness  and  dependence,  but 
it  does  not  go  to  the  root  of  the  matter.  There  will  always  be 
inequalities  in  wealth  and  room  for  personal  gifts  from  the 
more  to  the  less  fortunate;  but  the  State  must  not  be  content 
with  such  patching  and  palliating,  but  must  strike  at  the 
roots  of  the  evil.  We  will  consider  the  chief  causes  of  poverty 
and  their  cure. 

(1)  The  cause  that  bulks  largest  is  the  inadequate  wages 
of  a  considerable  portion  of  the  lower  classes.  It  is  obvi- 
ously impossible  to  support  the  average  family  of  five  in 
decency,  not  to  say  in  health,  efficiency,  or  comfort,  with 

*  For  methods  and  results  in  baby-saving,  consult  the  Secretary  of  the 
National  Association  for  the  Study  and  Prevention  of  Infant  Mortality, 
li^U  Cathedral  Street,  Baltimore,  Maryland.  Also  Outlook,  vol.  101,  p.  190. 
J.  S.  Gibbon,  Infant  Welfare  Centers. 


SOCIAL  ALLEVIATION  349 

an  income  of,  say,  less  than  two  thousand  dollars  a  year,  as 
prices  go  at  time  of  writing  (1G20).  Yet  great  numbers  of 
families  at  present  have  to  exist  somehow  upon  less,  even 
much  less.  Probably  five  million  adult  male  workers  in  this 
country  are  receiving  less  than  a  thousand  dollars  a  year.^ 
Even  when  mothers  work  who  ought  to  be  at  home  tending 
the  children,  even  when  children  w^ork  who  ought  to  be  in 
school,  the  total  income  is  often  miserably  inadequate.  Yet 
there  is  ample  wealth  in  the  country,  if  it  were  better  dis- 
tributed, to  pay  a  living  wage  to  every  laborer.  By  some  one 
of  the  means  which  we  shall  presently  discuss,  the  State  must 
see  that  all  laborers  are  well  enough  paid  to  enable  them, 
while  they  work,  to  support  in  comfort  a  moderate  family. 
(2)  Involuntary  unemployment  is  the  next  source  of 
poverty.  This  is  due  to  many  causes:  the  periodic  depres- 
sions and  failures  of  industries;  the  introduction  of  new 
machinery,  throwing  out  whole  classes  of  laborers;  the  enor- 
mous influx  of  immigrants  and  consequent  congestion  in  the 
cities  of  unskilled  labor;  lack  of  education,  or  natural  stupid- 
ity, which  render  some  men  too  incompetent  to  retain  posi- 
tions. Ignorance  can  be  overcome  by  proper  compulsory 
education  laws;  all  but  the  actually  feeble-minded  (who 
must  be  cared  for  in  institutions)  can,  by  skillful  attention, 
be  taught  proficiency  in  some  trade.  And  with  a  more  wide- 
spread education  the  work  that  requires  no  skill  can  be  left 
to  the  hopelessly  stupid.  The  congestion  of  labor  in  the 
cities  2  can  be  largely  remedied  by  free  state  employment  bu- 
reaus which  shall  serve  as  distributing  agencies;  there  is 
almost  always  work  enough  and  to  spare  in  some  parts  of 
the  country,  and  usually  not  far  away.  But  more  than  this 

^  Cf.  H,  P,  Fairchild's  comments  in  Forum,  vol.  52,  p.  49;  and  a  report 
by  Dr.  L.  L.  Harris  of  New  York  City  Health  Dept.,  1919. 

2  In  February,  1914,  there  were  reported  to  be  350,000  men  out  of  work 
in  New  York  City  (Outlook,  March  14,  1914). 


350  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

is  necessary;  the  State  must  see  that  work  is  offered  every 
man  who  is  able  to  work.  All  sorts  of  public  works  need 
unskilled  laborers  in  every  city  of  the  country;  there  is 
digging  to  be  done,  shoveling  and  sweeping  and  carting. 
There  are  roads  to  be  built,  rivers  to  be  dredged,  parks  to  be 
graded,  buildings  to  be  erected,  a  thousand  things  to  be 
done.  It  will  be  quite  feasible,  when  wages  are  generally 
adequate,  for  the  cities,  by  general  agreement,  to  offer  work 
to  all  applicants  at  a  wage  so  low  as  not  to  attract  men  away 
from  other  employments,  and  yet  to  enable  them  to  support 
their  families  decently.  The  low  wages  given  will  save  the 
city  much  money  directly,  as  well  as  saving  it  the  care  of  the 
indigent.  But  it  will  be  a  feasible  plan  only  when  the  city's 
jobs  cease  to  be  used  as  a  means  of  vote-buying  by  pohti- 
cians  and  are  offered  where  they  are  needed.^ 

(3)  The  third  important  cause  of  poverty  is  sickness  and 
the  death  of  wage-earners.  Here  the  way  is  clear.  When  the 
State  has  taken  the  measures  we  have  enumerated  for  the 
pubKc  health,  when  it  provides  competent  doctors  and 
nurses,  and  bears  the  cost  of  illness,  we  shall  have  only  the 
loss  of  wages  during  the  illness  or  after  the  death  of  wage- 
earners  to  consider.  And  here  some  form  of  universal  insur- 
ance will  probably  be  the  solution;  this  is  preferable  to  state 
care  of  dependents,  as  it  carries  no  taint  of  charity.  This 
solves  every  problem  but  the  delicate  one,  which  must  be 
entrusted  to  expert  diagnosticians,  of  determining  whethe' 

*  See  W.  H.  Beveridge,  Unemployment.  J.  A.  Hobson,  The  Problem  ofthb 
Unemployed.  Alden  and  Hayward,  The  Unemployable  and  the  Unemployed. 
C.  S.  Loch,  Methods  of  Social  Advance,  chap.  ix.  Quarterly  Journal  of 
Economics,  vol.  8,  pp.  168,  453,  499.  Review  of  Reviews,  vol.  9,  pp.  29, 179. 
Charities  Review,  vol.  3,  pp.  221,  323.  Independent,  vol.  77,  p.  363.  National 
Municipal  Review,  vol.  3,  p.  366. 

The  unemployment  which  is  the  result  of  laziness  must  be  cured  by  com- 
pulsory work  —  as  in  farm  colonics,  which  have  been  successful  in  Europe. 
Cf .  Edmoud  Kelly,  The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp. 


SOCIAL  ALLEVIATION  351 

a  given  case  of  reluctance  to  work  is  caused  by  physical 
weakness  or  mere  laziness. 

(4)  The  fourth  great  cause  of  poverty  in  the  past,  drink, 
has  now  been  eradicated  in  the  United  States,  and  will  grad- 
ually be  eradicated  throughout  the  world. 

(5)  There  remain  three  personal  causes  which  need  be 
the  only  permanently  troublesome  factors  —  laziness,  self- 
indulgence,  and  the  incontinence  which  results  in  over-large 
families.  The  laziness  which  prefers  chronic  inactivity  to 
work  is  not  normal  to  human  nature,  and  will  be  largely 
banished  by  education,  the  improvement  of  health,  and  the 
improvement  of  the  conditions  and  hours  of  labor.  The  obsti- 
nate cases  of  unwillingness  to  work  must  be  cured  by  com- 
pulsory labor  in  farm  colonies  or  on  public  works;  most  such 
cases  respond  to  intelligent  treatment  and  cease  to  be  trouble- 
some when  some  physical  or  moral  twist  has  been  remedied. 
The  waste  of  income  in  self-indulgence  of  one  form  or  other 
is  more  difficult  to  deal  with;  but  the  law  can  justly  forbid 
the  wage-earner  from  squandering  upon  himself  money 
needed  by  wife  and  children,  and  direct  that  a  due  propor- 
tion of  his  wages  be  paid  directly  to  the  wife.  If  neither 
father  nor  mother  will  use  their  money  for  the  proper  welfare 
of  the  children,  the  State  must  take  the  children  from  them — 
though  that  step  should  only  be  a  last  and  desperate  resort. 
Finally,  there  is  the  tendency,  unfortunately  most  prevalent 
among  the  lowest  classes,  to  have  more  children  than  can  be 
decently  cared  for.  To  some  extent  this  evil  can  be  reme- 
died by  the  dissemination  of  information  concerning  proper 
methods  of  preventing  conception;^  to  some  extent  by  moral 
training  to  self-control  and  a  sense  of  responsibility.  Or  the 
State  may  undertake  the  support  of  all  young  children  and 

T  There  is,  however,  a  danger  in  the  general  dissemination  of  such  infor- 
mation —  the  danger  of  increasing  prostitution  by  lessening  one  of  the  chiei 
deterrents  therefrom. 


S52  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

countenance  large  families;  if  this  is  done  (see  chapter  xxx), 
steps  must  of  course  be  taken  to  prevent  the  marrying  of  the 
unfit  —  or,  at  least,  their  breeding.  With  our  rapidly  de- 
creasing birth-rate,  and  the  spread  of  education,  which 
will  do  away  with  "lower"  classes  and  fit  every  one  in  some 
decent  degree  to  be  a  parent,  this  will  probably  be  the 
ultimate  solution. 

With  the  disappearance  of  poverty,  the  miserable  living 
conditions  of  so  large  a  proportion  of  our  population  will 
automatically  improve.  But  much  should  be  done  directly 
by  the  State  to  prevent  such  housing  conditions  as  make  for 
physical  or  moral  degeneration.  We  are  far  behind  Europe 
in  housing-legislation,  and  conditions  in  most  of  our  cities 
are  going  from  bad  to  worse.  There  is,  however,  no  need 
whatever  of  unsanitary  housing;  it  is  merely  the  selfishness 
of  owners  and  the  apathy  of  the  public  that  permits  its 
existence.  The  crowding  —  which  in  New  York  City  runs 
up  to  some  thirteen  hundred  per  acre  —  can  be  stopped  by 
simple  legislation.  The  lack  of  proper  light  or  ventilation, 
of  proper  water  supply,  plumbing,  or  sewerage,  of  proper 
removal  of  ashes,  garbage,  or  rubbish,  is  inexcusable.  The 
results  of  living  in  the  dark,  foul-aired,  unsanitary  tenements 
of  our  slums  are :  a  great  increase  in  sickness  and  premature 
death;  a  stunting  of  growth,  physical  and  mental,  and  an 
increase  in  numbers  of  backward  and  delinquent  children; 
the  spread  of  vicious  and  criminal  habits  through  the  lack 
of  privacy  and  contagion  of  close  contact  with  the  vicious. 
We  are  breeding  in  our  slums  a  degenerate  race,  —  boys 
who  grow  up  used  to  vice,  and  girls  that  drift  naturally  into 
prostitution;  we  are  allowing  disease  to  spread  from  them, 
through  the  children  that  go  to  the  public  schools,  the  shop- 
girls we  buy  from  in  the  stores,  the  servants  that  enter  our 
houses,  the  men  we  rub  elbows  with  on  the  street  or  in  the 


SOCIAL  ALLEVIATION  353 

street-cars.  Very  salutary  are  the  laws  that  require  the  name 
of  the  owner  to  be  placed  on  all  buildings;  shame  before  the 
public  may  wring  improvements  from  many  a  landlord  who 
now  takes  profits  from  tenements  unfit  for  habitation.  But 
it  ought  not  to  be  left  to  the  conscience  of  the  individual 
owner;  the  State  must  exercise  its  primar;^''  right  to  forbid 
the  crowding  of  tenants  into  houses  which  do  not  afford 
sanitary  quarters  and  permit  a  decent  degree  of  privacy. 

///.  Commercialized  vice  ?  The  duty  of  the  State  in  regard 
to  the  vice  caterers  is  obvious;  the  commercializing  of  vice 
must  be  strictly  prohibited  by  law  and  enforced  by  whatever 
means  experience  proves  most  effective.  We  must  include 
in  this  class  of  enemies  of  society  the  venders  of  habit-form- 
ing drugs.  But  the  right  and  duty  of  society  to  interfere 
with  their  traffic  has  ah-eady  been  asserted  by  implication, 
in  our  discussion  of  alcohol;  that  argument  applies  a  fortiori 
to  opium  and  cocaine.  Of  the  proprietors  of  gambling-dens, 
indecent  "shows,"  etc.,  we  need  not  further  speak,  concen- 
trating our  attention  instead  upon  the  worst  species  of 
vice  catering,  the  commercializing  of  prostitution. 

The  extent  to  which  the  sale  of  woman's  virtue  prevails 
in  our  cities  is  scarcely  believable.  The  recent  commission 
of  which  Mr.  Rockefeller  was  chairman  actually  counted 
14,926  professional  prostitutes  in  Manhattan  alone,  m  1912; 
while  personal  visitation  established  the  existence  of  over 
sixteen  hundred  houses  where  the  gratification  of  lust  could 
be  bought.  Not  all,  certainly,  were  counted;  and  this  list  is, 
of  course,  entirely  exclusive  of  the  great  number  of  girls 
occasionally  and  secretly  selUng  themselves  to  friends, 
acquaintances,  and  employers.  Many  hundreds  of  men  and 
women,  keepers  of  houses,  procurers,  and  the  like,  live  on  the 
proceeds  of  this  great  underground  industry;  and  to  some 
extent  —  though  to  what  extent  it  is,  of  course,  impossible 
to  ascertain  —  the  forcible  retention  of  young  girls  is  prac- 


S54  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

tised.  Similar  conditions  exist  in  most  of  the  world's 
cities. 

What  is  being  done  to  abolish  this  ghastliest  of  evils?  In 
most  great  cities,  scarcely  anything,  for  two  reasons:  the 
one  being  that  so  many  men,  perhaps  the  majority,  secretly 
wish  to  retain  an  opportunity  for  purchasing  sex  gratifica- 
tion, the  other  that  the  police  generally  find  the  protection 
of  illegal  vice  an  easy  source  of  revenue.  If  the  poHce  are 
honest,  they  break  up  a  disorderly  house  —  and  let  the 
inmates  carry  the  lure  of  their  trade  elsewhere.  The  magis- 
trates fine  them,  or  give  them  sentences  just  long  enough  to 
bring  them  needed  rest  and  nutrition,  and  send  them  back 
to  their  business.  Or  they  drive  them  out  of  town  —  to  swell 
the  numbers  in  the  next  town.  Attempts  at  legahzation  and 
localization  are  frank  admissions  of  inabiHty  or  lack  of 
desire  to  fight  the  evil;  their  effect  is  to  make  the  way  of 
temptation  easier  for  the  youth.  Compulsory  medical 
inspection  gives  a  promise  of  immunity  from  disease  which  is 
largely  illusory,  and  entices  men  who  are  now  restrained  by 
prudential  motives. 

There  is,  however,  much  hope  for  improving  conditions :  — 

(1)  Now  that  women  vote,  there  are  stronger  forces  to 
fight  the  evil.  The  prostitutes  themselves,  being  mostly 
minors,  and,  in  any  case,  anxious  to  conceal  their  identity, 
seldom  vote;  and  the  remaining  women  are  almost  en  masse 
bitterly  opposed  to  the  trade.  With  women  voting,  and  an 
efficient  political  administration  inaugurated  in  our  cities, 
we  shall  hope  to  witness  the  end  of  the  scandalous  non- 
enforcement  of  existing  laws. 

(2)  The  abolition  of  the  liquor  trade  has  taken  aw^ay  the 
great  political  ally  of  the  trade  in  girlhood;  and  without  the 
demoralizing  influence  of  alcohol  fewer  men  wiU  yield  to 
their  passions  and  fewer  girls  be  pliant  thereto. 

(3)  The  Rockefeller  Commission  disclosed  the  fact  that 


SOCIAL  ALLEVIATION  355 

the  overwhelming  majority  of  prostitutes  are  almost  wholly 
uneducated  —  about  half  of  those  questioned  had  not  even 
gone  through  the  primary  school,  and  only  seven  per  cent 
had  finished  the  grammar-school  work.  Compulsory  educa- 
tion, vigilantly  enforced,  will  greatly  lessen  the  number  of 
girls  who  will  be  willing  to  take  up  the  life  of  degradation, 
suffering,  and  premature  death;  especially  will  this  be  the 
case  if  sex  hygiene  is  properly  taught.  Approximately  a 
quarter  of  the  girls  studied  were  mentally  defective;  these 
should  have  been  detected  in  the  schools  and  removed  to  the 
proper  institutions  before  they  fell  prey  to  the  clever  schemes 
of  the  procurer.^  For  a  falhng-off  in  this  alarming  number  of 
mental  defectives  we  must  await  scientific  eugenic  laws  — 
to  be  discussed  in  chapter  xxx. 

(4)  It  is  a  shameful  fact  that  thousands  of  girls,  dependent 
upon  their  own  earnings  for  support,  receive  less  than  enough 
to  enable  them  to  live  in  decent  comfort,  not  to  say  with  any 
enjoyment  of  hfe.  Many,  of  course,  waste  their  earnings  on 
needlessly  fine  clothes,  or  at  the  "shows";  the  American 
fashion  of  extravagant  dress  and  the  craving  for  amusement 
are  factors  of  importance  in  the  ruin  of  young  girls.  But  ten 
dollars,  or  even  fifteen  dollars,  a  week  is  not  enough  to  live 
on  in  the  cities;  and  many  girls  are  paid  no  more,  even  less. 
The  State,  in  framing  its  minimum  wage  laws,  or  other  legis- 
lation, must  take  cognizance  of  this  startling  and  intolerable 
situation. 

(5)  Provision  should  be  made  for  the  care  of  girls  who 
come  alone  to  the  cities.  Dormitories  with  clean  and  airy 
bedrooms  at  minimum  cost,  and  attractive  reading-  and 
social-rooms,  offering  provision  for  normal  social  Hfe  and 
amusement,  can  do  much  to  keep  lonely  and  restless  girls 
out  of  the  clutches  of  the  vicious  and  the  vice  caterers. 

*  Of  64-7  wajrward  girls  recently  at  the  Bedford  Reformatory,  over  300 
were  accounted  mentally  deficient. 


356  PUBLIC  MOHALITY 

Similar  provision  for  young  men  who  live  alone  might  avail 
to  lessen  to  some  extent  their  patronage  of  houses  of  vice. 

(6)  The  model  injunction  acts  of  a  few  of  our  more 
advanced  States  "vest  the  power  in  any  citizen,  whether  he 
or  she  is  personally  damaged  by  such  establishment,  to 
institute  legal  proceedings  against  all  concerned;  to  secure 
the  abatement  of  the  nuisance,  and  perpetual  injunction 
against  its  reestablishment."  It  is  too  early  yet  to  speak 
with  assurance  of  the  practical  working  of  this  method;  but 
it  bids  fair  to  make  the  brothel  business  more  precarious. 
If,  in  addition,  laws  against  street  soliciting  are  strictly 
enforced,  the  first  steps  of  young  men  into  vice  will  be  made 
much  less  alluringly  easy  than  at  present. 

(7)  The  most  radical  and  effective  measure  of  all  will  be 
to  arrest  the  professional  prostitutes,  segregate  them,  and 
keep  them  segregated  during  the  dangerous  years,  except 
as  genuine  signs  of  intention  to  reform  appear,  in  which  case 
they  may  be  released  upon  probation.  The  expense  will  be, 
at  the  outset,  considerable.  But  the  girls  will  be  taught 
trades,  and  kept  at  work  which  will  in  most  cases  more  than 
pay  for  their  support.  Moreover,  the  community  will,  of 
course,  save  the  vast  sinns  now  passed  over  by  its  lustful 
men  to  these  women.  The  saving  of  health  and  life  will  be 
incalculable.  The  girls,  although  under  restraint,  will  be 
infinitely  better  off  than  they  were,  and  can  in  most  cases, 
with  patience  and  education,  be  made  ultimately  to  realize 
their  gain;  as  they  grow  older  and  forget  their  early  years  of 
shame,  they  can  be  set  free  again,  with  some  skilled  trade 
learned,  and  some  accumulated  earnings.  Professional  pros- 
titution will,  of  course,  still  flourish  to  a  degree  underground; 
but  it  will  be  a  highly  risky  business,  attracting  far  fewer 
girls,  and  difficult  for  the  uninitiated  young  man  to  discover. 
With  this  outlet  for  lust  partially  closed,  there  would  no 
doubt  tend  to  be  an  increase  in  solitary  and  homosexual 


SOCIAL  ALLEVIATION  857 

vice,  and  in  the  seduction  of  innocent  girls.  But  the  latter 
outlet  can  be  checked  by  raising  the  "age  of  consent"  to 
twenty  or  twenty-one,  and  punishing  the  seduction  of 
younger  girls  as  rape.  And  the  former  evils,  serious  as  they 
are,  are  far  less  of  an  evil  than  the  creation  of  our  present 
wretched  class  of  professional  prostitutes.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  there  would,  beyond  all  question,  be  a  great  diminution 
in  sexual  vice,  the  present  amount  of  it  being  due  by  no 
means  wholly  to  desire  that  is  naturally  imperious,  but  to 
the  artificial  fostering  of  that  desire  by  those  who  hope  to 
profit  financially  thereby. 

IV.  Crime?  The  gravest  of  all  social  ills  is  —  crime.  Its 
treatment  may  be  considered  under  the  three  heads  of  pre- 
vention, conviction,  and  the  treatment  of  convicted  crimi- 
nals. 

(1)  To  some  extent,  not  yet  clearly  determined,  the  causes 
of  crime  are  temperamental,  due  to  congenital  defects  or 
overexcitable  impulses.  The  inherited  effects  of  insanity, 
alcoholism,  and  other  pathological  conditions,  make  self- 
control  far  more  difficult  for  some  unfortunates.  Such  bane- 
ful inheritances  will  some  day  be  minimized  by  eugenic  laws; 
and  individuals  whose  abnormal  mental  condition  makes 
them  dangerous  to  society  will  be  kept  under  permanent 
restraint. 

The  causes  of  crime  are,  however,  to  a  far  greater  degree 
environmental.  Undernutrition,  overwork,  worry,  and 
various  other  sources  of  poor  health,  create  a  condition  of 
lowered  resistance  to  impulse.  The  herding  of  the  poor  into 
crowded  tenements,  the  inability  to  find  work,  the  lack  of 
wholesome  interests  and  excitements  to  provide  a  normal 
outlet  for  energy  of  body  and  mind,  the  daily  sight  of  the 
luxury  of  the  rich  and  the  bitterness  of  its  contrast  with  their 
own  need,  awaken  dangerous  passions  and  reckless  defiance 
of  law.  The  lack  of  education,  contact  with  successful  crim- 


858  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

inals,  and  the  absorption  of  law-defying  philosophies  of  life, 
tend  to  make  crime  appear  natural  and  justified.  All  of 
these  unhealthy  conditions  are  being  attacked  under  the 
spur  of  our  new  social  conscience;  and  with  every  step  in 
social  alleviation  crime  diminishes.  Criminals  are,  in  general., 
just  such  men  and  women  as  we;  in  like  situations  we  too 
should  be  tempted  to  crime.  We  might  all  repeat  with 
Bunyan:  "There,  but  for  the  grace  of  God,  go  I!"  Give 
every  man  and  woman  a  fair  chance  for  happiness  in  normal 
ways,  and  the  lure  of  crime  will  largely  vanish.^ 

Yet  human  nature  in  its  most  favorable  circumstances 
and  in  its  most  favored  individuals  has  its  twists  and  its 
anti-social  impulses.  For  the  potential  criminal  —  and  that 
means  for  every  one  of  us  —  there  must  be  elaborated  also 
a  system  of  moral  or  religious  training  which  shall  seek  to 
develop  the  better  nature  that  is  in  every  man  and  enchain 
the  brute.  With  such  a  discipline  imposed  upon  each  gener- 
ation there  would  be  a  far  greater  hope  for  the  repression  of 
evil  tendencies,  whether  due  to  temperamental  perversion 
or  provocative  environment. 

(2)  If  there  is  much  to  be  done  in  the  prevention  of  crime, 
there  is  also  much  to  be  done  in  insuring  the  prompt  con- 
viction of  offenders.  The  legal  delays  and  obtrusion  of  the 
technicalities  which  now  so  often  obstruct  the  administra- 
tion of  justice,  hold  out  a  means  to  the  criminal  of  escaping 
punishment,  work  hardship  to  the  poor,  who  cannot  afford 
to  employ  the  sharpest  lawyers,  and  needlessly  retard  the 
clearing  of  the  reputation  of  the  innocent.  The  overuse  of 
the  plea  of  insanity  has  become  latterly  a  pubhc  scandal. 
In  certain  courts  it  has  sometimes  seemed  impossible  to 
convict  a  criminal  who  has  plenty  of  money  or  strong  politi- 
cal influence.  In  other  cases  such  men  have  been  set  free  on 
bail  and  proceeded  to  further  criminal  acts.    Victims  of 

1  Cf.  An  Open  Letter  to  Society  from  Convict  1776  (F.  H.  Revell  Co.). 


SOCIAL  ALLEVIATION  359 

injuries  may  have  to  wait  years  for  compensation;  if  they 
are  poor,  they  may  hesitate  to  set  out  on  the  long  and  dubi- 
ous course  of  a  lawsuit;  or,  if  they  embark  upon  it,  it  is  only 
by  an  agreement  wherein  the  speculator-lawyer  takes  the 
lion's  share  of  the  compensation.  The  result  of  all  this  fric- 
tion in  the  machinery  of  the  courts  is  an  increase  in  crime, 
and  an  increase  in  the  illegal  punishment  of  crime.  Lynch- 
ings,  which  are  such  a  disgrace  to  this  country,  are  due  pri- 
marily to  indignation  at  crime  which  bids  fair  to  be  inade- 
quately punished;  they  will  occur,  in  spite  of  their  injustice 
and  brutality,  until  the  penalties  of  the  law  are  made  uni- 
versally prompt  and  sure  and  fair.^  A  wholesome  disregard 
of  technicalities,  and  an  interpretation  of  the  law  in  the  Une 
of  equity,  a  rigid  exclusion  of  irrelevant  evidence  and  argu- 
ment, the  provision  of  an  adequate  number  of  courts  to  pre- 
vent the  pihng  up  of  cases,  and  of  a  public  defender,  of  skill 
and  training,  to  look  after  the  interests  of  the  poor,  the 
removal  of  judgeships  from  politics  by  the  general  improve- 
ment of  our  political  system,  and  the  adjudgment  of  insanity 
only  by  impartial,  state-hired  ahenists  —  these  are  some  of 
the  reforms  that  ethical  considerations  suggest.  ^ 

(3)  The  ends  to  be  borne  in  mind  in  the  treatment  of  the 
convicted  criminal  are  four:  First,  reparation  to  the  injured 
party  must  be  demanded  of  him,  so  far  as  money  will  con- 
stitute reparation;  if  he  has  not  the  money,  his  future  work 
must  go  for  its  accumulation,  so  far  as  that  is  compatible 
with  the  support  of  his  infant  children. 

Secondly,  he  must  be  punished  severely  enough  to  serve 
as  a  warning  to  other  potential  offenders  and,  so  far  as  they 
are  amenable  to  such  fears,  deter  them  from  similar  crimes. 
Capital  punishment  for  the  worst  crimes  is  shown  by  statis- 

*  See  J.  E.  Cutler,  Lynch  Law.  Ovtlook,  vol.  99,  p.  706. 
2  Cf .  W.  H.  Taft,  Four  Aspects  of  Civic  Duty,  ii.  Outlook,  vol.  92,  p.  359: 
vol.  98,  p.  884. 


860  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

tics  to  be  more  of  a  deterrent  than  confinement;  whethef 
the  danger  of  executing  an  innocent  man  is  grave  enough  to 
offset  this  pubUc  gain  is  an  open  question.^ 

Thirdly,  he  must  be  prevented  from  doing  any  more 
harm;  this  means  confinement  just  so  long  as  expert  crimi- 
nologists deem  him  dangerous,  whether  not  at  all  (unless  to 
deter  others)  or  for  life.  The  old  system  of  giving  a  fixed 
sentence  is  wholly  imjustifiable;  some  are  thereby  kept 
imprisoned  when  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  them  cap- 
able of  living  honorably  and  serving  the  community  as  free 
men,  others  are  let  loose,  after  a  term,  more  dangerous  to 
the  community  than  ever.  The  habitual  criminal,  who  alter- 
nates between  periods  of  crime  and  periods  of  imprisonment, 
should  be  an  unknown  phenomenon.  The  judge  should 
be  obliged  to  pronounce  an  indeterminate  sentence,  and 
leave  it  to  the  expert  prison  ojfficials  to  decide  if,  or  when, 
it  is  safe  to  release  the  prisoner  on  parole.  Experience  has 
already  shown  that  few  mistakes  are  made  (where  prison 
management  is  kept  out  of  machine  poUtics);  and  as  the 
released  prisoner  is  under  surveillance,  and  may  be  returned 
to  the  prison  without  trial  for  disorderliness,  drunkenness, 
or  other  anti-social  conduct,  he  is  not  likely  to  do  much 
damage.  A  second  offense  would  be  likely  to  bring  upon 
him  imprisonment  for  life,  which  would  be  within  the  dis- 
cretion of  the  prison  oflScials.  This  method  provides  a  spur 
to  good  behavior,  and,  when  used  in  conjunction  with  the 
reforming  influences  we  are  about  to  consider,  works  admir- 
ably in  abolishing  the  criminal  class;  whatever  criminal 
class  persists  —  those  who  cannot  or  will  not  reform  —  are 
kept  under  restraint  for  life,  where  they  can  do  no  harm. 

Fourthly,  and  most  important  of  all,  a  painstaking 
attempt  must  be  made  to  reform  the  criminal,  to  make  him 
a  normal,  socially  useful  man.  At  present  our  prisons  are 
*  See  A.  J.  Palm,  The  Death  Penalty. 


SOCIAL  ALLEVIATION  361 

rather  schools  of  corruption  than  of  uplift;  too  often  first 
offenders  are  thrown  into  association  with  hardened  crim- 
inals, and  come  out  after  their  term  of  years  with  their 
minds  full  of  criminal  suggestions,  and  less  able  than  before 
to  live  a  normal  life.  The  prison  should  be  a  training-school 
for  the  morally  perverted.  First  of  all,  the  prisoner  should 
be  taught  a  trade,  if  he  knows  none,  and  made  competent 
to  earn  an  honest  living.  He  should  be  kept  at  regular  work, 
and  his  wages  used  partly  to  reimburse  society  for  his  keep, 
and  partly  to  support  his  family,  or,  if  he  has  none,  to  give 
him  a  new  start  when  he  leaves  prison.  Recent  experience 
shows  that  the  great  majority  of  prisoners  can  be  trusted  to 
work  outside  the  prison,  at  any  ordinary  labor,  without 
guards  —  returning  to  the  prison  each  evening.^  Regular 
hours,  and  wholesome  living  in  every  way,  are,  of  course, 
enforced;  sports  are  encouraged  in  leisure  hours,  and  physical 
development  ensured.  Educational  influences  are  brought 
to  bear,  through  class-instruction,  books,  sermons,  private 
talks.  The  indi\^duars  mind  is  studied  and  every  effort 
made  to  supplant  morbid  and  anti-social  by  normal  and 
moral  ideas.  Few  criminals  but  are  amenable  to  skillful 
guidance;  most  of  them,  could,  if  pains  were  taken,  be  trans- 
formed into  useful  citizens.  All  this  application  of  modern 
penological  ideas  means  a  greatly  increased  expense  per 
capita;  but  this  will  be  largely  offset  by  the  work  required 
of  all  healthy  prisoners,  and  in  any  case  is  the  best  sort  of 
^n  investment.  The  prevention  of  crime  is,  in  the  long  run, 
much  less  costly,  even  from  a  purely  financial  standpoint, 
than  crime  itself. 

On  pathological   social   conditions   in   general:   Smith,   Social 

PatJiology.  E.  T.  Devine,  Misenj  and  its  Causes.  M.  Conyngton, 

IIow  to  Help.    C.  Aronovici,   Knoicing  Ones  Own  Community. 

Jane  Addams,  Twenty  Ycarti  at  Hull  Uousc.    S.  Nearing,  Social 

1  See  Century,  vol.  87,  p.  746. 


362  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

Adjustment.  Charles  Booth,  Life  and  Labor  of  the  People  of  London. 
C.  R.  Henderson,  Social  Duties.  W.  Gladden,  Social  Salvation. 
Guide  to  Reading  in  Social  Ethics  by  Teachers  in  Harvard  University. 

Public  health:  H.  Ellis,  The  Task  of  Social  Hygiene,  The  Nation^ 
alization  of  Health.  Outlook,  vol.  98,  p.  63;  vol.  102,  p.  764.  Litera- 
ture pubhshed  by  The  Committee  of  One  Hundred  on  National 
Health  (105  East  Twenty-second  Street,  New  York  City).  C.  R. 
Henderson,  The  Social  Spirit  in  America,  chap.  v.  World^s  Work, 
vol.  17,  p.  11321;  vol.  21,  p.  13881;  vol.  23,  p.  692.  W.  H.  Allen, 
Civics  and  Health. 

Poverty  and  living  conditions:  R.  Hunter,  Poverty.  B.  S, 
Rowntree,  Poverty,  A  Study  of  Town  Life.  Adams  and  Sumner, 
Labor  Problems,  chap.  v.  A.  S.  Warner,  American  Charities.  E.  T. 
Devine,  Principles  of  Relief.  S.  Webb,  Prevention  of  Destitution. 
Literature  of  the  American  Association  of  Societies  for  Organizing 
Charity,  and  of  the  Charity  Organization  Department  of  the 
Russell  Sage  Foundation  (both  at  105  East  Twenty-second  Street, 
New  York  City).  L.  Veiller,  Housing  Reform.  DeForest  and 
Veiller,  The  Tenement-House  Problem.  J.  Lee,  Constrvx^tive  and 
Preventive  Philanthropy.  Alden  and  Hayward,  HouMng.  J.  A.  Riis, 
The  Battle  vnth  the  Slum.  National  Municipal  Review,  vol.  2,  p.  210. 

Commercialized  vice:  Jane  Addams,  A  New  Conscience  and  an 
Ancient  Evil.  Report  of  the  Chicago  Vice  Commission:  The  Social 
Evil  in  Chicago.  G.  J.  Kneeland,  Commercialized  Prostitution  in 
New  York  City.  A.  Flexner,  Prostitution  in  Europe.  C.  Pankhurst, 
Plain  Facts  about  a  Great  Evil. 

Crime:  F.  H..  Vs^'mes,  Punishment  and  Reformation.  E.  A.  Ross, 
Social  Control,  chap.  xi.  R.  M.  McConnell,  Criminal  Responsibility 
and  Social  Constraint.  H.  Ellis,  The  Criminal.  A.  H.  Currier,  The 
Present-Day  Problem  of  Crime.  P.  A.  Parsons,  Responsibility  for 
Crime.  E.  Ferri,  The  Positive  School  of  Criminology.  W.  Tallack, 
Penological  and  Preventive  Principles.  E.  Carpenter,  Prisons, 
Police,  and  Punishment.  T.  S.  Mosby,  Crime,  its  Causes  and  Cures. 
H.  Oppenheimer,  The  Rationale  of  Punishment.  C.  R.  Henderson, 
Preventive  Agencies  and  Methods;  The  Cause  and  Cure  of  Crime.  Out- 
look, vol.  94,  p.  252;  vol.  97,  p.  403.  World's  Work,  vol.  21,  p.  14254. 
North  American  Review,  vol.  138,  p.  254.  International  Journal  of 
Ethics,  vol.  20,  p.  281. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

INDUSTRIAL  WRONGS 

We  have  been  discussing  the  treatment  of  recognized 
crime.  But  beyond  the  boundaries  of  conduct  universally 
labeled  as  criminal,  there  is  a  whole  realm  of  anti-social 
action  to  which  the  public  conscience  is  only  beginning  to  be 
sensitive,  although  it  is  often  far  more  harmful  to  the  general 
welfare  than  that  for  which  men  are  imprisoned.  Especially 
is  this  true  of  the  wrongs  connected  with  modern  industry. 
As  Professor  Ross  puts  it,^  "the  master  iniquities  of  our 
time  are  connected  with  money-making  " ;  and  so  our  "  moral 
pace-setters,"  who  are,  for  the  most  part,  confining  their 
attacks  to  the  time-worn  and  familiar  sins,  "do  not  get  into 
the  big  fight  at  all."  The  root  of  the  trouble  is  that  great 
power  over  the  lives  and  happiness  of  others  has  been 
acquired  by  a  small  class  of  irresponsible  men,  many  of 
whom  fail  to  recognize  their  privileged  position  as  a  public 
trust  and  care  only  for  enriching  themselves. 

As  we  noted  in  chapter  iii,  the  complexification  of  our 
industrial  life  is  making  possible  a  whole  new  range  of  what 
must  be  branded  as  crimes;  endless  opportunities  have  been 
opened  up  of  money-making  at  the  cost  of  others'  suffering. 
Often  that  suffering,  or  loss,  is  so  remote  from  the  path  of 
the  greedy  business  man  that  he  does  not  see  himself,  and 
others  fail  to  see  him,  as  the  predatory  money-grabber 
that  he  is.  The  many  who  have  been  ruined  by  unscrup- 
ulous competitors  are  often  embittered,  the  repressed  classes 

*  Sin  and  Society,  p.  97. 


864  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

develop  a  fierce  hatred  of  capitalsm;  but  the  pubUc  as  a 
whole  has  not  been  aroused  to  rebuke  this  "newer  unright- 
eousness." We  must  proceed  to  note  its  commonest  con- 
temporary forms. 

In  our  present  organization  of  industry,  what  are  the  duties 
of  business  men : 

/.  To  the  public  ?  (1)  The  first  duty  of  business  men  is  to 
supply  honest  goods,  in  honest  measure.  Underweight, 
undermeasure,  double-bottomed  berry-boxes,  bottles  so 
shaped  as  to  appear  to  contain  more  than  their  actual  con- 
tents, are  obviously  cheating.  Misbranding  of  goods  is  now 
regulated,  so  far  as  interstate  trade  goes,  by  the  Federal 
Pure  Food  and  Drugs  Act;  and  most  States  have  similar 
legislation.  Misrepresentation  in  advertisement  should  be 
severely  punished;  the  selling  of  cold  storage  for  fresh 
products,  of  part-cotton  for  all-wool  clothing,  of  less  fcr 
more  expensive  woods,  and  the  thousand  other  ways  of 
palming  inferior  goods  upon  an  inexpert  public  for  high- 
grade  articles.  At  present  there  is  little  recourse  but  to  carry 
distrust  into  all  purchasing,  learn  to  be  canny,  and  to  recog- 
nize differences  in  quality  in  all  articles  needed.  But  the 
average  man  cannot  become  an  expert  purchaser;  he  buys 
furniture  which  breaks  down  prematurely;  he  pays  a  high 
price  for  clothing  which  proves  to  have  no  wearing  quality; 
he  buys  patent  medicines  which  promise  to  cure  his  physical 
ills,  and  is  lucky  if  they  do  not  leave  him  worse  in  health 
than  before.  Jerry-building,  and  the  doing  of  fake  jobs  by 
contractors,  especially  for  municipalities,  is  one  of  the 
scandals  of  our  times. ^ 

^  See  EncyclopcBdia  Britannica,  article,  "Adulteration."  E.  Kelly 
Twentieth  Century  Socialism,  bk.  ii,  chap.  i.  For  a  notorious  case  of  tamper- 
ing with  weights,  see  Outlook,  vol.  92,  p.  25;  vol.  93,  p.  811.  For  cases  of 
adulteration.  Good  Housekeeping  Magazine,  vol.  54,  p.  593.  F.  W.  Taussig, 
Principles  of  Economics,  chap.  45. 


INDUSTRIAL  HUONGS  365 

(2)  Another  duty,  less  generally  recognized  by  even  the 
more  honorable  business  men,  is  to  sell  their  goods  at  fair 
prices.  The  strangulation  of  competition  by  mutual  agree- 
ments or  the  formation  of  trusts,  aided  often  by  an  iniqui- 
tously  high  tariff,  has  put  many  a  business  for  a  time  on  a 
par  with  those  natural  monopolies  which,  if  unregulated, 
can  always  exact  exorbitant  prices  for  what  the  public  needs. 
Rich  profits  have  been  made  by  the  tucking  of  a  few  cents 
on  to  the  price  of  gas,  or  coal,  or  steel,  or  oil,  or  telephone 
service.  Enormous  fortunes  have  been  made,  at  the  public 
expense,  by  the  practical  cornering  of  staple  commodities. 
These  hold-up  prices  should  be  clearly  recognized  for  what 
they  are  —  a  form  of  modern  piracy.  No  business  man  or 
corporation  is  entitled  in  justice  to  more  than  a  moderate 
reward  for  the  mental  and  physical  labor  expended;  the 
excessive  incomes  of  monopoly  are  largely  at  the  expense  of 
the  public,  who,  by  one  means  or  other,  are  being  compelled 
to  pay  more  than  a  fair  price  for  the  article.^ 

(3)  Finally,  all  business  must  be  looked  upon  as  a  form  of 
public  service,  and  the  convenience  of  customers  scrupu- 
lously consulted.  Where  there  is  competition  this  tends  to 
regulate  itself;  but  our  public-service  monopolies  have  too 
often  followed  the  '*public-be-damned"  policy.  The  long- 
suffering  community  puts  up  with  inadequate  and  crowded 
street-cars,  inconvenient  train  service,  a  bungled  and  high- 
handed telephone  system.  Railway  managements  have 
sometimes  been  criminally  indifferent  to  public  safety,  find- 
ing it  less  expensive  to  lose  occasional  damage  suits  than  to 
install  safety  appliances.  Efficiency  in  serving  the  public 
has  likewise  been  sacrificed  to  dividends;  and  courtesy, 
where  it  is  not  recognized  to  have  a  cash  value,  tends  to  dis- 
appear. Such  indictments  point  to  the  widespread  existence 

^  For  cases,  see  C.  R.  Van  Hise,  Concentration  and  Control,  pp.  109,  145. 
149.   The  War  has,  of  course,  vastly  sthnulatcd  this  profiteering. 


366  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

of  the  idea  that  men  and  corporations  are  in  business  fof 
themselves  only,  and  not  as  fulfilling  a  public  need.^ 

//.  To  investors  f  It  has  not  been  generally  enough  recog- 
nized that  business  men  owe  it  to  investors  to  do  their  best 
to  see  to  it  that  they  get  fair  returns  on  their  money  invested 
—  and  only  fair  returns.  There  are  a  number  of  ways  in 
which,  on  the  one  hand,  the  investing  public  is  "skinned,'* 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  stock  in  a  business,  largely  owned 
by  the  management  itself,  has  been  rewarded  with  unde- 
served dividends  at  the  expense  of  the  public. 

(1)  There  are,  in  the  first  place,  the  get-rich-quick  swindles, 
the  out-and-out  impostures,  which  have  deceived  the  credu- 
lous into  investments  that  never  could  pay.  Bonanza  mines, 
impractical  inventions,  town  lots  laid  out  on  the  prairie, 
orange  groves  that  existed  only  on  paper  —  such  bogus 
hopes  have  enticed  many  an  honest  man  and  woman,  who 
could  ill  afford  to  lose,  into  turning  over  their  small  earnings 
to  the  brazen  exploiters. ^ 

(2)  But  such  arrant  deception  is  not  the  commonest  form 
of  wrong.  A  more  usual  practice,  and  more  dangerous  — • 
because  it  deceives  even  the  intelligent  —  is  to  overcapitalize 
an  honest  business,  to  issue  "watered"  stock  —  that  is, 
stock  in  excess  of  the  actual  value  of  plant,  patents,  and  other 
assets.  These  stocks  are  issued  merely  to  sell.  If  the  business 
is  very  successful,  its  profits  may  pay  a  fair  return  on  all 
this  capital;  if  not,  low  dividends  or  none  can  be  paid  until 
the  business  slowly  catches  up  with  its  overcapitalization. 
In  all  investment  —  as  our  industrial  organization  at  present 
goes  —  there  is  risk;  but  to  create  a  needless  risk  and  deceive 
the  public  into  taking  it  is  plain  dishonesty.  The  extra 
money  thus  sucked  from  the  public  goes  sometimes  to  pay 

^  For  concrete  illustrations,  see  Outlook,  vol.  91,  p.  861;  vol.  95,  p.  51& 
WorkVs  Work,  vol.  23,  p.  5-79. 

2  For  cases,  see  WorlcTs  Work,  vol.  21,  p.  14112. 


INDUSTRIAL  WRONGS  367 

excessive  salaries  to  the  officials  of  the  company,  sometimes 
to  pay  excessive  prices  for  patents  or  plants  purchased;  there 
are  many  subtle  ways,  known  to  *'high  finance,"  of  misap- 
propriating stockholders'  money  and  diverting  it  to  the 
pockets  of  the  promoters.  Many  great  fortunes  have  been 
made  in  this  way ;  such  exploitation  is  so  new  to  society  that 
it  has  not  yet  awakened  to  its  essentially  criminal  nature. 

Even  if  the  business  is  able  to  pay  good  dividends  on 
watered  stock,  the  crime  of  overcapitalization  is  not  lessened, 
though  the  harm  done  is  now  not  to  the  investor  but  to  the 
public.  Stocks  should  represent  only  the  actual  value  of  the 
property,  so  that  dividends  may  be  only  a  fair  return  for 
capital  really  invested  in  the  business.  Where  there  is  sharp 
competition,  the  possibility  of  overcharging  the  public  to 
make  returns  on  watered  stock  is  cut  out,  and  the  loss  falls 
upon  the  investor.  But  in  the  case  of  monopolies,  such  as 
railways,  or  of  combinations  which  practically  stifle  compe- 
tition, the  public  may  be  charged  enough  to  "pay  a  fair 
dividend  to  investors,"  although  the  capital  upon  which 
dividends  are  being  paid  is,  to  considerable  extent,  not 
actual  money  invested,  but  mere  paper  stock.  ^ 

(3)  A  third  method  of  "fleecing"  investors  lies  in  skillful 
manipulation  of  the  stock  market.  In  ways  which  are  known 
to  the  initiated,  it  is  often  possible  artificially  to  raise  or 
lower  the  market  value  of  stocks.  Unwary  investors  are 
lured  in;  timid  investors  are  frightened  out;  through  all 
ticker  fluctuations  the  brokers  win  their  commissions;  the 
skilled  financiers  and  organizers  of  combinations  rake  in 
unearned  sums  that  are  sometimes  immense,  while  the  losses 
fall  mostly  to  the  lot  of  the  innocent  and  unsophisticated 

*  On  stock-watering,  see  Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics,  pp.  561-64.  Outlook^ 
vol.  85,  p.  562.  Political  Science  Quarterly,  vol.  26,  p.  88.  International 
Journal  of  FAhics,  vol.  18,  p.  151.  C.  R.  Van  Hise,  Concentration  and  Control, 
pp.  115,  142,  etc. 


868  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

who  are  honestly  seeking  to  put  their  savings  into  solid 
investments.  The  ethics  of  the  stock  market  has  not  yet 
been  clearly  decided,  and  the  subject  is  too  big  to  discuss 
here.  It  is  mentioned  only  to  point  out  one  more  form  of 
social  sinning,  as  yet  inadequately  punished  or  rebuked, 
whereby  men  of  capital  and  brains  have  been  able  to  pocket 
money  for  which  they  have  given  no  return  to  society.^ 

III.  To  competitors  ?  (1)  The  most  conspicuous  form  of 
wrongdoing,  perhaps,  to  be  charged  to  modern  business  is 
the  attempt  to  get  monopoly  by  foul  means.  The  story  of 
too  many  of  our  great  trusts  is  a  story  of  competitors  ruined 
by  ruthless  and  unscrupulous  methods.  The  competitor 
may  be  hurt  by  the  circulation  of  falsehoods  concerning  his 
business,  his  right  to  patents,  or  the  worth  of  his  goods.  He 
may  be  denied  outlet  to  markets  by  control  of  the  railway 
upon  which  he  must  depend.  If  the  capital  of  the  concern 
that  is  seeking  monopoly  permits,  the  price  of  the  article 
manufactured  may  be  lowered  until  rivals  with  less  financial 
backing  are  forced  out  of  business  —  after  which  the  price 
can  be  raised  and  losses  recouped.  With  skill  and  foresight 
worthy  of  a  better  cause,  some  of  the  great  industrial  leaders 
of  our  day  have  eliminated  one  rival  after  another  and 
attained  that  unification  of  a  business  which  has,  indeed* 
its  great  economic  advantages,  but  is  not  to  be  won  at  such 
a  bitter  cost.^ 

(2)  Even  where  monopoly  is  not  sought,  there  are  many 
unfair  methods  of  competition  —  unfair  to  competitors  and 
to  the  public  that  both  should  serve.  One  method,  much  dis- 
cussed in  recent  years,  is  that  of  railway  rebates.  By  this  is 
meant  favoritism  in  freight  rates  between  shippers  and  be- 
tween localities.    One  manufacturer,  who  is  in  a  position 

^  For  cases,  see  C.  Nonnan  Fay,  Big  Business  and  Government.  Outlook, 
vol.  91,  pp.  591,  636. 

*  See,  for  example,  I.  Tarbell,  History  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company. 


INDUSTRIAL  WTiONGS  SGi) 

to  ship  his  goods  by  either  of  two  railways,  perhaps  by  a 
water  route,  is  given  a  low  rate  to  get  his  freight;  another 
manufacturer  of  similar  goods,  not  so  favorably  situated,  ij 
made  to  pay  a  higher  rate.  Rates  from  seaboard  or  river 
cities,  where  water  competition  exists,  have  often  been  con- 
siderably lower  than  rates  from  inland  towns  on  the  same 
line,  with  a  very  much  shorter  haul.  In  such  ways  the  rail- 
way squeezes  those  whom  it  can  squeeze  and  is  content  with 
a  bare  profit  where  it  can  do  no  better.  Where  the  railway  is 
controlled  by  the  same  interests  that  control  some  industrial 
combination,  the  favoritism  may  go  even  farther,  and  the 
railway's  profits  be  sacrificed  entirely  for  the  cheaper 
marketing  of  that  particular  trust's  article.  Against  all  such 
inequalities  in  the  treatment  of  shippers  the  public  conscience 
has  lately  protested;  the  railways  are  recognized  as  a  public 
instrument  of  transportation,  which  should  be  open  to  use 
by  all  upon  equal  terms,  at  a  price  w^hich  will  repay  the  cost 
of  carriage  plus  a  fair  profit.^ 

IV.  2' 0  employees?  (1)  The  first  duty  of  employers  is  to 
give  to  all  employees  a  fair  wage.  If  the  business  does  not 
pay  enough  to  allow  this,  it  has  no  right  to  exist;  if  the  owners 
are  pocketing  large  salaries,  or  giving  dividends  to  stock 
holders,  this  money  should  be  used  first  for  a  proper  payment 
of  the  workers.  So  many  laborers  are  at  the  mercy  of  the 
employing  class,  because  of  their  ignorance,  their  lack  of 
capital  and  necessity  of  work  at  any  wage,  and  often  their 
unfamiliarity  with  the  language  and  customs  of  the  country, 
that  it  has  become  possible  in  many  cases  to  treat  them  like 
animals  and  give  them  less  than  enough  to  sustain  life  in 
decency,  not  to  say  in  comfort.  Such  a  case  as  that  of  our 
benevolent  Mr.  Carnegie,  who  is  said  to  have  pocketed 

*  On  railway  rebates,  see  H.  R.  Seager,  Introduction  to  Economics,  chap. 
XXIV,  sees  2G0-G3.  F.  W.  Taussig,  Principles  of  Economics,  chap.  60,  sees, 
7.  8.  Outlook,  vol.  £1,  p.  803;  vol.  S5,  p.  101. 


870  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

forty-one  million  dollars  in  one  year's  earnings  of  his  steel 
trust,  while  many  hundreds  of  his  employees  were  getting 
but  a  miserable  pittance  and  living  in  vile  surroundings, 
seemed  glaring  a  few  years  ago;  but  the  enormous  profits 
made  by  many  corporations  during  and  since  the  war  has 
familiarized  us  with  this  form  of  injustice.  Wages  have  been 
raised,  but  not  nearly  in  proportion.  The  callousness  cf 
some  of  the  privileged  classes  toward  the  underpayment  cf 
the  lower  classes  is  almost  on  a  par  with  the  attitude  of  the 
nobility  before  the  French  Revolution.^  Fortunately,  the 
public  is  coming  to  see  not  only  the  wrong  done  to  the  help- 
less poor,  but  the  cost  to  the  community  in  breeding  under- 
fed, ill-housed,  criminally  tempted  classes,  and  the  danger 
that  lies  ahead  if  these  classes  realize  their  power  before 
amelioration  is  effected  from  above.  As  a  recent  writer  has 
put  it.  Addition  —  Division = Re  volution.  ^ 

(2)  Another  phase  of  modern  industrial  injustice  is  the 
overlong  hours  of  work  still  required  in  many  industries. 
The  race  for  cheapness  of  product  has  bhnded  manufacturers 
and  the  public  to  the  cost  in  terms  of  human  happiness.  An 
eight-hour  day  is  quite  long  enough  to  produce  all  that  is 
necessary,  with  the  aid  of  modern  machinery;  every  man 
should  be  given  a  margin  of  leisure  for  education,  recreation, 
and  social  life.  And  every  man  should  be  given  the  benefit 
of  that  one  day*s  rest  out  of  seven  which  is  so  precious  a 
legacy  to  us  from  the  Jewish  religion.^  Those  industries  that 
require  continuous  use  of  machinery  should  employ  three 
complete  shifts  of  workmen;  and  those  that  must  be  run 
every  day  in  the  week  should  have  enough  extra  helpers  to 

*  See,  for  example,  Outlook,  vol.  101,  p.  34t5. 

2  S.  Nearing,  Wages  in  the  United  States;  Social  Adjustment,  chap.  iv. 
Ryan,  A  Living  Wage. 

^  A  joint  legislative  committee  in  Massachusetts  in  1907  estimated  that 
222,000  persons  in  that  State  were  working  seven  days  in  the  week.  Similar, 
or  worse,  conditions  exist  throughout  the  country. 


INDUSTRIAL  WRONGS  S71 

pewnit  a  weekly  day  off  to  each  man.  This  humanizing  of 
hours  cannot  be  done  by  individual  action,  where  compe- 
tition is  sharp;  but  by  legislation  that  bears  equally  upon  all, 
a  generous  standard  —  the  eight-hour  day  and  six-day  week 
—  can  be  maintained,  with  hardship  to  none  and  a  great 
increase  in  the  health  and  happiness  of  the  masses. 

Especially  jealous  should  the  law  be  for  the  welfare  of 
women  workers.  In  cotton  mills  in  the  South  women  work 
ten  and  twelve  hours  a  day;  in  canneries  in  the  North  they 
work,  during  the  short  season,  fifteen  and  eighteen  hours  a 
day,  eighty  or  even  ninety  hours  a  week.  Particularly 
should  women  be  protected  during  the  weeks  before  and 
after  childbirth;  as  it  is,  women  workers  are  often  ruined  in 
health  for  Ufe,  the  rate  of  infant  mortality  is  shockingly 
high,  and  the  children  that  survive  are  usually  subnormal. 
Girls  through  overwork  are  weakened  too  seriously  to  bear 
strong  children  —  which,  in  any  case,  they  have  had  no  time 
or  opportunity  to  learn  how  to  nurture  and  rear.  No  doubt 
women  should  work,  as  well  as  men;  if  not  in  the  home,  then 
outside  the  home.  But  the  contemporary  economic  pressure 
that  bears  so  hard  on  so  many  girls  and  women  must  be 
eased  not  only  for  their  sakes  but  for  that  of  coming  gener- 
ations.^ 

(3)  The  most  piteous  form  of  industrial  slavery  is  that  of 
young  children,  who  should  be  in  school  or  out  of  doors, 
developing  their  minds  and  bodies  into  some  measure  of 
readiness  for  adult  work  and  responsibility,  instead  of  pre- 
maturely losing  the  joy  of  life  and  stunting  their  mental  and 
physical  growth.  In  1920  over  two  million  children  under 
sixteen  were  earning  their  living  in  this  country.  Even  many 
thousands  of  children  of  twelve  years  or  less  are  set  to  work 
in  our  factories  and  canneries.  These  children  get  almost  no 

^  Dorothy  Richardson,  The  Long  Day.  S.  Nearing,  Social  Adjustment, 
chap.  X.  J.  Rae,  Eighi  Hours  for  Work. 


j?72  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

education,  insufficient  physical  development  and  wholesome 
recreation;  in  great  numbers  they  die  early,  and  if  they  live 
it  is  commonly  to  fall  into  some  form  of  vice  or  crime,  and 
to  breed  an  inferior  race.  Nothing  is  more  inhumane  or  more 
mad  than  for  the  community  to  permit  cheapness  of  goods 
at  such  a  price.  Indeed,  child  labor  means,  in  the  end, 
economic  waste;  the  ultimate  loss  in  efficiency  on  the  part 
of  these  undeveloped,  uneducated  children,  far  more  than 
overbalances  the  temporary  industrial  gain.  The  situation 
has  been  incredibly  shocking;  the  employers  who  seek  such 
an  advantage  over  their  humaner  rivals,  and  the  legislators 
who  have  winked  at  their  inhumanity,  deserve  no  mild 
reprobation.  But  legislation  alone  is  not  adequate  to  meet 
the  situation;  the  underlying  cause  is  the  insufficient  pay- 
ment of  adult  workers,  which  practically  necessitates  sup- 
plementation by  what  the  children  can  add  to  the  family 
income.  This  is  one  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  all  our 
social  problems  are  tangled  together  so  that  it  is  impossi- 
ble fully  to  solve  any  one  without  solving  the  others.  When 
every  adult  receives  wages  enough  to  support  a  normal 
family  —  and  when  he  is  content  to  restrict  his  family  to 
normal  size;  when  the  public  schools  are  made  efficient 
enough  to  show  their  evident  worth  to  parents  and  to 
attract  the  children  themselves,  and  a  strict  truant  system 
takes  care  that  the  law  is  really  obeyed;  when  the  sick  and 
defective  and  aged  among  the  poor  are  cared  for  at  public 
expense  as  a  matter  of  course,  there  will  be  no  need  for 
children  to  work  to  help  support  the  family;  and  we  must 
endeavor,  by  the  arousal  of  pubHc  opinion  and  by  more 
drastic  legislation,  to  keep  children  out  of  the  factories, 
the  shops,  and  the  mines,  till  they  are  full-grown  and  edu- 
cated. ^ 

*  S.  Nearing,  The  Solution  of  the  Child-Labor  Problem.   J.  Spargo,  The 
Bitter  Cry  of  the  Children.  E.  N.  Clopper,  Child  Labor  in  City  Streets.  Re- 


INDUSTRIAL  WRONGS  S7S 

(4)  A  less  appalling,  but  still  sufficiently  serious  aspect  of 
industrial  unrighteousness  is  the  dirty,  crowded,  ugly,  un- 
sanitary, and  sometimes  indecent  conditions  under  which 
many  workers  in  our  prosperous  age  have  to  carry  on  their 
work.  Lack  of  proper  lighting,  space,  and  ventilation, 
unnecessary  noises,  and  general  untidiness,  undermine  the 
health  and  morals  of  laborers;  while  insufficient  fire-protec- 
tion causes  intermittently  one  tragedy  after  another.  Much 
has  been  done  in  many  quarters  to  improve  such  conditions; 
not  a  few  up-to-date  factories  are  models  of  cleanliness  and 
sanitation,  spacious,  reasonably  quiet,  and  altogether 
pleasant  places  in  which  to  spend  the  working  day.  They 
point  the  way  which  all  must  in  time  follow.  In  addition, 
the  provision  of  reading-rooms,  baths,  rest-  and  recreation- 
rooms,  lunch-rooms,  athletic  fields,  and  the  like,  give  augury 
of  that  happy  future  when  work  shall  be  divorced  from  ugli- 
ness and  free  from  unnecessary  physical  strain.^ 

(5)  Finally,  the  callousness  to  injuries  incurred  by  em- 
ployees must  be  sharply  checked.  Well  over  a  hundred 
thousand  men,  women,  and  children  are  killed  or  injured 
every  year  in  the  various  industries  of  this  country.  Our 
proportion  of  accidents  is  far  greater  than  in  Europe;  the 
great  majority  are  preventable  by  the  adoption  of  known 
safeguards.  What  stands  in  the  way  is,  partly,  ignorance 
and  heedlessness  on  the  part  of  employers,  and,  still  more, 
the  initial  cost  of  installing  safety  appliances.  It  is  often 
cheaper  to  lose  an  occasional  damage  suit  than  to  forestall 
accidents.  In  coal  mines  alone  we  have  let  thirty  thousand 
men  be  killed  and  seventy-five  thousand  be  more  or  less 

ports  of  Annual  Meetings  of  the  National  Child  Labor  Committee.   (Free 
literature.   105  East  Twenty-second  Street,  New  York  City.) 

^  Sir  T.  Oliver,  Diseases  of  Occupation.  W.  H.  Tolman,  Social  Engineer- 
ing, chaps.  Ill,  X,  XI.  World's  Work,  vol.  15,  p.  9534;  vol.  23,  p.  294.  Outlook, 
vol.  97,  p.  817;  vol.  100,  p.  353. 


374  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

seriously  maimed,  in  a  decade;  proportionately  about  twice 
as  many  as  in  European  mines  —  which  are  far  from  ideally 
safeguarded.  There  are  two  ways  to  check  this  waste  and 
crippling  of  human  life;  one  is  to  keep  our  legislation  up  to 
date,  and  require  the  installation  of  every  effective  safety 
device,  no  matter  if  the  cost  to  the  public  has  to  be  increased. 
The  other  is  to  make  accidents  so  expensive  to  employers 
that  they  will  have  a  greater  interest  in  taking  measures  to 
prevent  them.  Certainly  all  deaths  or  injuries  in  any  indus- 
try where  proper  precautions  have  been  neglected  must  be  a 
criminal  matter  for  the  employer.  ^ 

Happily,  the  Workman's  Compensation  Laws  are  now  an 
accepted  part  of  our  industrial  system.  For  though  it  is 
no  doubt  true  that  industrial  accidents  are  commonly  due, 
in  some  measure,  to  the  carelessness  of  the  worker,  his  pun- 
ishment, in  the  loss  of  life  or  limb,  is  great  enough;  and  if  he 
dies  or  is  incapacitated  from  supporting  wife  and  children, 
the  burden  should  fall  upon  the  community,  which  is  able 
to  bear  it.  The  older  system,  that  left  the  injured  worker  to 
rely  upon  a  damage  suit,  was  far  too  slow,  dubious,  and  ex- 
pensive; the  corporation,  with  its  expert  lawyers,  had  too 
great  an  advantage  over  the  helpless  and  sorrow-struck  poor. 
In  some  form,  automatic  compensation  for  injuries  is  des- 
tined to  become  universal;  the  cost  will  fall  upon  the  indus- 
try, where  it  belongs,  bad  feeling  between  employer  and  em- 
ployee will  cease,  the  courts  will  be  freed  from  much  work, 
and  relief  will  follow  injury  with  promptness  and  certainty.^ 

What  general  remedies  for  industrial  wrongs  are  feasible? 

(1)  The  first  step  toward  an  amelioration  of  our  crude  and 

unjust  industrial  code  is  to  awaken  the  public  conscience  to 

1  Outlook,  vol.  92,  p.  171;  vol.  93,  p.  196;  vol.  99,  p.  202.  World's  Work, 
vol.  22,  p.  13602;  vol.  23,  p.  713. 

2  H.  R.  Seager,  Social  Insurance.    Outlook,  vol.   85,   p.  503;  vol.  92^ 
p.  319;  vol.  98,  p.  49.  S.  Nearing,  Social  Adjustment,  chap.  xii. 


INDUSTRIAL  WRONGS  375 

protest  against  the  evils  we  have  enumerated.  Publicity, 
pitiless  publicity,  alone  can  lead  to  redress.  These  large- 
scale,  impersonal  sins  must  not  be  so  nonchalantly  tolerated; 
instead  of  applauding  and  envying  the  shrewd  financier  who 
rakes  in  unearned  profits  by  clever  manipulation,  by  unscru- 
pulous use  of  inside  information,  and  disregard  of  the  welfare 
of  workers,  competitors,  and  public,  we  must  brand  him  as  a 
selfish  scoundrel,  turn  him  out  of  the  church,  ostracize  him 
in  society.  Such  a  man  must  not  be  looked  upon  as  a  success- 
ful business  man  any  more  than  a  pirate  is  a  successful 
trader;  success  must  clearly  imply  obedience  to  the  rules  of 
the  game.  Taking  all  that  one  can  grab  without  punishment 
is  a  reversion  to  barbarism;  the  unscrupulous  profiteer  is 
morally  no  better  than  a  pickpocket.  And  these  men  are,  in 
general,  responsive  to  public  opinion;  it  has  effected  rapid 
improvement  in  some  points  in  the  past  few  years.  Just  so 
soon  as  the  community  conscience  is  aroused  to  the  point  of 
a  general  condemnation  of  industrial  robbery,  it  will  cease 
to  flaunt  itself  so  boldly,  and  lurk  only  underground  with  the 
other  furtive  sins. 

(2)  We  cannot  rely  wholly  upon  the  force  of  public 
opinion,  however;  the  law  must  be  ready  to  check  those  who 
are  insensitive  to  moral  restraints.  One  by  one,  the  path^ 
of  evildoing  must  be  blocked.  Especially  must  the  law  learn 
how  to  punish  corporations,  which  have  been  the  greatest 
offenders.  At  present  the  stockholders  throw  responsibility 
upon  the  directors,  the  directors  upon  their  managers,  and 
they  upon  the  subordinates  who  have  personally  carried 
through  the  evil  practices.  But  to  punish  these  subordinates 
is  ineffective,  because  they  have,  in  general,  little  money 
wherewith  to  pay  fines,  and  will  be  ready  to  run  the  risk  of 
imprisonment  for  the  sake  of  pleasing  their  superiors  and 
earning  promotion.  If  they  are  imprisoned,  others  can 
readily  be  found  to  step  into  their  places  and  carry  on  the 


376  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

behests  of  the  "men  higher  up."  It  is  these  superiors  who 
must  be  held  responsible  for  acts  done  by  their  subordinates. 
If  they  realize  the  risk  of  punishment  falling  upon  their  own 
heads,  they  will  see  to  it  that  illegal  practices  are  discon- 
tinued. It  will  probably  be  necessary  to  hold  directors 
Responsible  for  the  conduct  of  their  managers,  and  stock- 
holders for  the  character  of  their  directors.  It  will  then 
become  the  business  of  owners  and  directors  to  watch  out  for 
lawbreaking  and  to  put  men  in  control  who  will  keep  to  fair 
dealing.  This  will  put  an  end  to  the  easy  assumption  of  the 
directorship  of  several  corporations  at  once  by  men  whose 
names  are  wanted;  directorship  will  be  made  to  imply 
actual  attention  to  the  affairs  of  the  business.  And  tht 
stockholders  will  take  pains  to  elect  such  directors  as  will 
not  incur  fines  for  the  corporation  that  will  lessen  their 
dividends.^ 

(3)  Through  these  two  means,  public  opinion  and  the 
law,  we  must  work  toward  the  ultimate  solution,  the  estab- 
lishment of  codes  of  honor  in  the  professions  and  industries. 
Canons  of  professional  ethics  have  been  adopted  by  law- 
yers and  doctors;  any  member  of  these  professions  who  is 
guilty  of  breaking  these  canons  suffers  loss  of  prestige  and, 
almost  inevitably,  financial  loss.  So  must  it  be  in  every 
industry;  each  must  be  organized  and  must  formulate 
for  itself  its  code;  so  that  pressure  from  within  will  supple- 
ment pressure  from  without.  There  is  plenty  of  capacity 
for  loyalty,  self-denial,  and  discipline  in  men,  even  in  cap- 
tains of  industry;  it  needs  only  to  be  aroused,  crystalUzedj 
directed. 

"We  may  prevent  certain  specific  practices  by  statutes 

which  make  them  misdemeanors;  but  in  so  doing  we  have 

simply  cut  off  one  way  of  reaching  an  end.  Men  will  get  the 

same  result  by  another  route.    It  is  not  enough  to  hinder 

^  For  commeDt  on  this  matter,  see  Outlook^  vol.  88,  p.  862. 


INDUSTRIAL  WRONGS  S77 

men  from  obtaining  money  or  office  in  certain  specified  ways. 
We  must  so  shape  their  ambitions  that  they  do  not  wish  to 
obtain  money  or  office  by  means  that  injure  the  community. 
We  must  get  them  to  consider  pubKc  selfishness  as  dishon- 
orable a  thing  as  we  now  consider  private  selfishness.  If  a 
man  to-day  crowds  himself  out  of  a  theater,  leaving  behind 
him  a  trail  of  bruised  women  and  children,  the  very  news- 
boy in  the  street  will  hiss  him  when  he  gets  to  the  door. 
Such  a  man  will  be  despised  by  the  public,  and  in  his  heart 
he  will  despise  himself,  for  taking  advantage  of  his  strength 
to  crush  others.  But  if  a  man  gets  money  or  office  by  analo- 
gous processes,  the  world  is  inclined  to  admire  the  result 
and  forgive  the  means;  and  the  man,  instead  of  despising 
himself  for  his  selfishness,  applauds  himself  for  his  suc- 
cess."^ 

Certainly,  unless  in  these  peaceful  ways  we  can  transform 
our  present  system  of  grab-as-grab-can  into  a  fair  and 
rational  industrial  order,  changes  will  come  by  violence  and 
revolution.  There  are  volcanic  passions  slumbering  beneath 
the  prosperity  of  our  trade  and  manufacture;  there  is  but 
a  brief  respite  before  society  wherein  to  evolve  a  measure 
of  social  justice.  The  lower  classes  are  awakening  to  their 
power;  unless  society  and  government  grant  them  their  fair 
share  of  the  fruits  of  industry,  they  will  take  them  through 
the  wreck  of  society  and  government.  There  is  no  moral 
problem  more  pressing  than  the  finding  of  peaceful  reme- 
dies for  industrial  wrongs. 

E.  A.  Ross,  Sin  and  Society.  H.  R.  Seager,  Introduction  to  EcO' 
nomics,  chap.  xxii.  C.  R.  Van  Rise,  Concentration  and  Control^ 
chap.  II.  A.  T.  Hadley,  Standards  of  Public  Morality.  H.  C.  Potter, 
The  Citizen  in  his  Relation  to  tlw  Industrial  Situation.  W.  Gladden, 
The  New  Idolatry.  R.  C.  Brooks,  Corruption  in  American  Politics 
and  Life.    H.  Jeffs,  Concerning  Conscience,  chap.  v.    Dewey  and 

^  A.  T.  Iladley,  Standards  of  Public  MoralUy,  p.  8. 


S78  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

Tufts,  EthicSy  chaps,  xxii,  xxin.  C.  R.  Henderson,  The  Social 
Spirit  in  America^  chaps,  viii,  rx.  J.  S.  Brooks,  The  Social  Unrest. 
Jane  Addams,  Democracy  and  Social  Ethics,  chap.  v.  Ruskm, 
Unto  this  Last.  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  vol.  23,  p.  455. 
Florence  Kelly,  Modem  Industry.  E.  D.  Page,  Trade  Morals.  W. 
H.  Hamilton,  Current  Economic  Problems,  pp.  180-94.  Harvard 
Theological  Review,  vol.  9,  p.  21.  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  109,  p.  441; 
vol.  Ill,  p.  433,  532. 
For  specific  references,  see  footnotes. 


CHAPTER  XXVn 

INDUSTRIAL  RECONSTRUCTION 

Our  modern  industrial  evils  are  so  grave  and  so  deep-- 
rooted that  it  is  highly  questionable  whether  the  pressure  ot 
public  opinion,  piecemeal  legislation,  and  the  development 
of  codes  of  honor  can  strike  deep  enough  to  eradicate  them. 
Is  not,  perhaps,  the  whole  system  morally  wrong?  Instead 
of  these  endless  attempts  to  cure  the  natural  results  of  the 
system,  is  there  not  need  of  a  radical  reconstruction?  Vari- 
ous attempts  have  been  made,  divers  proposals  are  offered, 
in  the  hope  of  curing  the  causes  of  present  maladies  and 
devising  a  juster  system.  Many  of  these  are  doubtless 
impracticable,  or  tend  to  work  more  hardship  than  amelio- 
ration. But  each  proposal,  of  any  plausibility,  has  a  right 
to  a  hearing  if  it  offers  to  end  the  great  wTongs  of  contempo- 
rary industry;  we  must  be  very  confident  that  it  will  not 
work  before  we  reject  it.  For  some  way  must  be  found  to 
right  these  wrongs,  or  our  whole  industrial  order  will  go  to 
smash.  We  must  not  condemn  too  hastily  a  method  which 
has  not  had  a  thorough  trial,  or  whose  defects  time  and 
experience  might  remedy.  For  mistaken  experiments  can 
be  discontinued;  and  great  as  is  the  danger  in  incautious 
radicalism,  the  danger  in  "standing  pat"  is  greater. 

Ought  the  trusts  to  be  broken  up  or  regulated? 

The  greatest  sinners  are,  certainly,  to  speak  generally, 
the  great  corporations  that  we  call  trusts  —  though  the 
word  "distrust"  would  better  express  contemporary  feeling! 
So  great  had  popular  hostility  to  them  become  that  the 


880  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

Democratic  party  platform  of  July,  1912,  declared  that  "a 
private  monopoly  is  indefensible  and  intolerable,"  and  de- 
manded "the  enactment  of  such  additional  legislation  as 
may  be  necessary  to  make  it  impossible  for  a  private 
monopoly  to  exist  in  the  United  States,*'  i.e.,  **the  control 
by  any  one  corporation  of  so  large  a  proportion  of  any  indus- 
try as  to  make  it  a  menace  to  competitive  conditions." 

But  is  it  necessary  to  destroy  this  splendidly  efficient 
concentration  of  industry  in  order  to  avoid  its  evils?  The 
proposal  to  revert  to  the  older  competitive  plan  is  reminis- 
cent of  the  outcry  against  machine  production  a  century 
earlier,  and  the  earnest  pleas  then  made  to  return  to  the 
hand- tool  method.  "Big  business"  constitutes  one  of  the 
greatest  advances  in  human  industry,  and  therefore  has 
surely  come  to  stay.  From  the  era  of  individual  workers 
owning  their  tools,  mankind  advanced  to  the  age  of  competi- 
tion between  small  concerns  using  machines ;  no  less  marked 
an  advance  is  that  to  the  age  of  large-scale  production  and 
unified  industry.  Its  advantages  may  be  briefly  summa- 
rized :  — 

(1)  The  competitive  system  involves  needless  duplica- 
tions of  plant,  machinery,  and  workers;  clerks  stand  idly 
in  rival  stores,  waiting  for  trade,  drummers  spend  their  time 
in  getting  trade  away  from  one  another,  great  sums  have  to 
be  spent  on  advertising.  Monopoly  means  a  saving  of  all 
this  wasted  time,  labor,  and  money. 

(2)  The  competitive  system  means  great  fluctuations  in 
industry,  constant  anxiety,  forced  cut  prices,  and  frequent 
failures,  with  their  financial  ruin  and  heartbreak  to  employ- 
ers and  loss  of  work  to  employees.  Monopoly  means  stabil- 
ity, comparative  freedom  from  anxiety,  and  a  saving  of  the 
economic  confusion  and  loss  of  bankruptcies. 

(8)  The  great  scale  of  monopolistic  production  tends  to 
still  further  economics.  Haw  materials  are  bought  and  trans- 


INDUSTRIAL  RECONSTRUCTION  381 

ported  in  larger  quantities,  and  so  at  lower  cost;  less  need  be 
kept  on  hand  at  a  given  time.  The  utilization  of  by-products, 
made  feasible  by  large-scale  production,  has  proved,  in 
many  cases,  a  striking  addition  to  human  wealth. 

(4)  Monopolistic  production  means  that  more  money  can 
be  put  into  improved  processes,  into  plant  and  machinery, 
into  making  factories  sanitary,  and  working  conditions 
pleasant.  The  conspicuousness  of  the  plant  makes  it  more 
open  to  pubhc  criticism  and  more  likely  to  awaken  a  sense 
of  pride  in  the  owners.  Conditions  are  seldom  tolerated  in 
the  big  concerns  that  go  unheeded  in  the  little  shops. 

Surely  our  attempt,  then,  must  be  to  retain  "big  busi- 
ness," and  cure  its  evils,  rather  than  to  turn  the  hands  of 
the  clock  backward  by  reverting  to  the  wasteful  competitive 
system.  If  this  proves  possible,  we  should  work  for  the 
organizing  of  the  as  yet  unorganized  industries.  Half  of 
human  effort  is  still  wasted,  through  lack  of  such  organiza- 
tion. If  the  innumerable  butcher  shops,  grocery  stores, 
apothecary  shops,  dry  goods  stores,  etc.,  throughout  the 
country,  were  consohdated  locally,  and  then  for  some  consid- 
erable section  of  the  country,  we  could  have  greatly  reduced 
prices  and  greatly  improved  shops.  Mr.  Woolworth's  chain 
of  five-  and  ten-cent  stores  offers  a  famiUar  contemporary 
example  of  the  efficiency  and  saving  to  the  consumer  of  such 
consoUdation. 

What  are  the  ethics  of  the  following  schemes : 

I.  Trade-unions  and  strikes?  We  must,  then,  consider 
what  methods  of  regulating,  without  destroying,  monopoly 
are  efficient  and  morally  defensible;  and,  first,  the  method 
into  which  the  working  classes  have  put  most  of  their  effort 
and  enthusiasm.  The  labor-unions  have,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
actually  effected  certain  results,  which  we  may  rapidly 
review :  — 


S82  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

(1)  Their  chief  accomplishment,  and  indeed  effort,  has 
been  the  raising  of  wages  and  shortening  of  hom*s  for  labor. 
Their  success,  however,  has  fallen  far  short  of  their  hopes. 
The  continually  rising  cost  of  living  has  neutralized  the 
general  rise  in  wages,  so  that  their  actual  commodity  value 
is,  on  the  whole,  lower  than  a  decade  ago.  As  a  whole,  the 
employing  class  disbelieves  in  the  unions  and  is  strenuously 
disinclined  to  yield  to  their  desires.  And  at  present  the  em- 
ployers are  usually  stronger  than  their  employees,  unless 
public  opinion  or  legislation  forces  them  to  surrender  their 
position. 

(2)  To  some  slight  extent,  but  only  to  a  slight  extent, 
they  have  effected  amelioration  in  other  matters  —  have 
freed  labor  from  the  tyranny  of  company  stores,  decreased 
child  labor,  secured  the  installation  of  safety  appliances, 
sanitary  conditions,  and  other  needed  improvements. 

(3)  Their  social  effect  has  been  greatest.  They  have 
amalgamated  our  stream  of  heterogeneous  immigrants  and 
fired  them  with  common  understanding  and  purpose;  they 
have  taught  the  ignorant  to  cooperate,  made  them  think, 
frowned  to  some  degree  upon  vice,  insured  their  members  to 
some  extent  against  illness  and  death,  and  promoted  general 
friendliness  among  the  laboring  classes. 

On  the  other  hand,  their  methods  have  been  productive 
of  much  harm :  — 

(1)  The  economic  loss  due  to  strikes  has  been  enormous; 
the  employers  have  suffered  heavily,  the  public  has  suffered 
heavily;  the  laborers  have  suffered  most  of  all.  Social 
amelioration  certainly  ought  not  to  have  to  come  about 
through  such  wasteful  methods  and  such  bitter  privation. 

(2)  The  inconvenience  caused  the  public  by  strikes  has 
often  been  very  great,  especially  where  the  coal  mines  or 
railways  have  been  affected.  Several  times  during  the  last 
few  years  serious  tragedy  has  been  barely  averted,  owing 


INDUSTRIAL  RECONSTRUCTION  38S 

to  strikes  m  the  coal  mines;  houses  must  have  heat,  industry 
must  have  fuel,  trains  must  be  run.  A  strike  of  locomotive  en- 
gineers means  obviously  a  great  peril  to  the  traveling  public. 

(3)  The  antagonisms  and  class  hatreds  engendered  by 
this  sort  of  industrial  warfare  do  infinite  moral  harm,  and 
retard  heavily  the  peaceful  solution  of  the  problems.  The 
class  organs  always  denounce  in  bitterest  terms  the  oppos- 
ing class,  and  lawlessness  readily  raises  its  head. 

(4)  Apart  from  their  conduct  of  strikes,  the  labor-unions 
must  answer  to  certain  serious  indictments.  They  have 
endeavored  to  restrict  output,  in  order  to  raise  prices.  They 
have  sought  to  restrict  the  number  of  apprentices  in  a 
trade,  and  have  opposed  trade  schools,  in  order  to  keep 
down  the  competition  for  positions.  They  have  insisted  on 
a  uniform  wage  without  regard  to  efficiency.  They  have 
opposed  scientific  management  and  the  increase  of  efficiency 
in  various  industries,  in  order  to  retain  more  workers  therein. 
They  have  insisted  upon  the  retention  of  incompetent 
employees,  thereby  directly  causing  railway  accidents  and 
other  evils.  They  have  often  antagonized  such  other 
ameliorative  methods  as  profit-sharing  and  government 
regulation,  and  have  rejected  overtures  from  employers, 
because  these  —  to  quote  from  a  union  pamphlet  — 
"remove  the  scope  and  field  of  trade-unionism. "(•)  They 
have  at  times  been  run  in  the  interests  of  selfish  leaders  and 
seemed  chiefly  a  money-making  scheme  of  a  few  grafters. 

There  can  be  no  question,  on  a  dispassionate  considera- 
tion, that  the  militant  methods  of  the  trade-unions  are  an 
unfortunate  and  temporary  expedient.  The  grievances  which 
they  have  sought  to  remedy  are  very  real  and  very  bitter; 
probably  even  such  results  as  they  have  attained  could  not 
have  been  effected  in  any  other  way.  In  spite  of  the  evils 
of  this  class-warfare,  it  must  go  on  if  the  workers  cannot 


884  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

otherwise  win  for  themselves  their  elementary  human 
rights  —  adequate  wages,  reasonable  hours,  decent  working 
conditions,  a  share  in  the  control  of  policy,  and  stability 
of  employment.  The  unions  have  grown  rapidly  during  the 
last  few  years,  and  will  doubtless  count  for  more  and  more 
in  the  solution  of  these  problems.  But  it  is  earnestly  to  be 
hoped  that  industrial  reconstruction  can  be  accelerated  by 
more  harmonious  and  less  wasteful  means. 

//.  Profit-sharing y  cooperation,  and  consumers*  leagues? 
(1)  The  usual  method  of  profit-sharing  is  for  the  employer 
to  set  aside  voluntarily  a  certain  proportion  of  the  profits  of 
successful  years,  to  be  distributed  among  the  employees  in 
addition  to  their  regular  wages,  the  distribution  being  made 
proportionate  to  the  amount  of  each  man's  wages.  It  is  thus 
properly  called  a  dividend  to  wages,  and  is  equivalent  to  a 
small  ownership  of  the  stock  of  the  business  by  each  worker. 
The  advantage  lies  not  only  in  the  fairer  distribution  of  the 
profits  of  a  business,  but  in  the  interest,  contentment,  and 
increased  efficiency  of  the  employees.  The  self-interest  of  the 
laborers  is  enlisted  to  prevent  strikes,  and  a  feeling  of  good 
will  tends  to  prevail.  Not  a  few  employers  are  giving  a 
degree  of  profit-sharing  as  a  mere  business  proposition;  and 
the  results  have  been  generally  successful. 

But  the  method  is  only  a  sop.  It  touches  only  one  of  the 
evils  above  mentioned,  that  of  underpayment  of  workers. 
And,  for  that  matter,  it  is  oftenest  introduced  where  the 
workers  are  already  well  paid.  It  is  possible  only  in  successful 
and  firmly  established  industries;  and  even  in  them,  bad 
years  may  necessitate  a  temporary  cessation  of  dividends  to 
wages,  and  generate  resentment  in  the  minds  of  the  laborers, 
who  do  not  know  the  precise  status  of  the  business.  More- 
over, since  the  workers  cannot  be  expected  to  reverse  the 
procedure  in  lean  years  and  contribute  to  the  maintenance  of 
the  business,  it  is  necessary,  in  most  industries,  to  reserve 


INDUSTRIAL  RECONSTRUCTION  385 

a  considerable  sum  from  the  profits  of  fat  years  to  tide  over 
possible  periods  of  lean  years.  It  might  be  possible  to  enforce 
by  law  the  accumulalion  of  such  a  reserve  fund,  and  then  the 
distribution  of  a  fixed  percentage  of  the  net  profits  of  the 
business  to  labor  —  instead  of  permitting  all  the  profits  to 
go  into  the  pockets  of  owners  or  stockholders.  But  such  a 
plan  will  probably  be  superseded  by  or  incorporated  into 
some  more  comprehensive  solution  for  industrial  evils,  a 
scheme  that  can  remedy  other  wrongs  besides  that  of  inade- 
quate wages. 

(2)  Cooperation  in  production  involves  democratic  man- 
agement of  a  business  as  well  as  a  more  radical  sharing  of  its 
profits.  The  workers  themselves  contribute  the  capital, 
elect  the  managers,  and  divide  the  profits.  By  their  votes 
they  can  determine  hours  of  work,  and  arrange  conditions 
to  suit  themselves,  so  far  as  their  capital  allows.  Coopera- 
tion —  when  fully  carried  out  —  is  socialism  on  a  small  scale 
introduced  into  the  midst  of  a  capitalistic  regime.  Its 
defects  are,  first,  that  it  is  diflficult  while  that  regime  lasts  to 
find  capital  enough  —  since  those  who  have  capital  to  invest 
usually  prefer  to  manage  the  business  themselves  or  to 
entrust  their  money  to  a  business  conducted  on  ordinary 
lines;  secondly,  that  failure  means  the  loss  of  the  hard-earned 
savings  of  workingmen;  thirdly,  that  it  is  diflScult  to  retain 
skillful  managers,  since  such  men  usually  prefer  the  oppor- 
tunities which  individualistic  business  offers  of  making  a 
larger  income;  and  fourthly,  that  it  is  difficult  for  a  demo- 
cratically managed  concern  to  compete  successfully  with 
autocratic  business.  Political  democracies  are  at  a  disad- 
vantage in  a  struggle  with  tyrannies,  if  the  latter  are  gov- 
erned by  able  men.  A  one-man  policy  is  more  stable,  per- 
mits of  quicker  action  and  a  more  consistent  policy  than  is 
possible  to  a  democracy.  Exactly  so  in  business,  our  dicta- 
torial captains  of  industry  have  an  advantage  over  the  smaD 


386  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

democratic  concerns,  with  their  usually  less  skilled  and 
always  less  powerful  heads,  and  their  smaller  capital.  The 
millionaire  can  cut  prices  and  stand  losses  which  would 
ruin  a  cooperative  body  of  workingmen.  So  that  cooperative 
production  in  competition  with  capitalistic  production  is 
severely  handicapped.  It  has  had,  to  be  sure,  many  suc- 
cesses. But  it  is  a  dubious  undertaking  in  a  world  wherein 
most  business  is  run  on  a  profit- taking  plan, 

(3)  Consumers'  cooperation  has  been  more  widely  success- 
ful. On  this  plan  a  number  of  people  contribute  the  capital 
of  a  business  in  equal  small  amounts  and  share  the  profits 
in  proportion  to  their  purchases.  The  possibility  of  excessive 
profits  to  a  single  owner  or  a  small  group  of  owners  is  thus 
abolished.  But  the  other  evils  of  autocratic  industry  remain; 
laborers  are  hired  for  current  wages,  as  by  the  capitalists, 
and  the  temptations  to  unfair  treatment  of  employees  and 
of  competitors  remain. 

(4)  "Consumers*  Leagues,"  so  called,  have  made  a 
business  of  ascertaining  the  conditions  under  which  goods  are 
produced,  and  exhorting  their  members  to  purchase  only 
those  which  have  involved  fair  treatment  to  the  workers. 
The  undertaking  is  praiseworthy,  and  has  accomplished 
some  good.  But  its  effects  are  limited  by  obvious  causes. 
It  is  extremely  difficult  in  many  cases  for  the  consumer  to 
discover  the  conditions  of  production  of  what  he  wishes  to 
buy.  It  is  a  nuisance  to  have  to  burden  himself  with  such 
perplexing  considerations.  And  it  is  impossible  to  maintain 
public  allegiance  to  a  white  list  in  face  of  the  temptation  of 
bargain  sales.  Evils  must  be  attacked  at  their  source;  they 
cannot  be  effectively  controlled  from  the  consumer's  end. 

Ill,  Government  regulation  of  prices ^  profits »  and  wages  f 
There  are  two  proposals  that  promise  thoroughgoing  cure 
for  industrial  evils  —  government  regulation  of  business, 
leaving  it  upon  its  present  capitalistic  basis,  and  sociaUsm, 


INDUSTRIAL  RECONSTRUCTION  387 

the  complete  democratizing  of  industry.   It  seems  that  one 
or  the  other  alternative  must  ultimately  be  accepted. 

According  to  the  former,  and  less  radical,  plan,  publicity 
of  accounts  would  be  required  in  every  industry;  and  state 
or  national  commissions  would  have  full  power  to  supervise 
the  conditions  of  production,  to  set  a  minimum  standard 
below  which  wages  must  not  fall,  to  fix  maximum  prices 
above  wliich  the  products  must  not  be  sold,  to  prevent  stock- 
watering,  to  enforce  standards  of  honesty  and  good  w^ork- 
manship  in  goods,  to  see  tc  it  that  all  competition  is  carried 
on  fairly,  and  to  forbid  excessive  salaries  to  managers.  Equal 
standards  would  be  exacted  throughout  an  industry,  ana 
any  increased  cost  of  production  would  result  in  the  raising 
if  prices  (except  where  profits  had  previously  been  exorbi- 
tant) ;  thus  there  would  be  no  real  hardship  upon  employers. 
The  minimum  wage  should  not,  of  course,  be  set  above  the 
actual  productive  power  of  labor;  and  the  inefficient  laborers 
who  would  be  thrown  out  of  employment  as  not  worth  the 
standard  wage  must  be  looked  after  by  the  provision  of  free 
vocational  education  and  state  employment.  Apprentices, 
cripples,  defectives,  and  persons  giving  only  part  time,  would 
be  permitted  to  receive  partial  wages;  and  above  the  mini- 
mum wage,  differences  in  stipend  would  still  exist,  as  now, 
to  stimulate  industry  and  skill.  With  such  provision  for  safe- 
guarding the  rights  of  labor,  of  competitors,  and  of  the  public, 
profits  would  not  be  directly  regulated;  if  they  became 
excessive,  they  would  be  clipped  by  the  requirement  of  a 
lower  price  for  the  product,  or  of  more  sanitary  or  safer  con- 
ditions of  production.  But  the  initiative  and  energy  of  the 
owners  would  be  retained  by  permitting  a  sliding  scale  of 
profits;  the  higher  the  wages  paid,  or  the  lower  the  price  set 
upon  products,  the  greater  the  profits  they  could  be  allowed. 
Thus  a  premium  would  still  be  set  upon  efficiency.  Under 
this  plan  monopoly  could  safely  be  allowed,  the  centraliza- 


888  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

tion  of  industry  could  be  carried  to  any  extent;  strikes  could 
be  absolutely  forbidden,  and  all  dissatisfaction  settled  by 
the  arbitration  of  the  impartial  government  commission. 
Monopoly  might  even  be  legally  maintained  by  a  refusal  oi 
charters  to  would-be  competitors,  thus  insuring  to  the 
public  the  advantages  of  a  completely  organized  business 
without  leaving  the  public  at  its  mercy.  The  natural 
monopolies,  such  as  railways,  telephones,  lighting-service, 
from  which  private  fortunes  have  often  been  made  at  public 
expense,  can  easily  be  regulated  by  carefully  considered  and 
short-term  franchises. 

Up  to  date,  the  partial  and  tentative  trials  of  this  plan 
have  been  encouragingly  successful.  But  there  are  obvious 
defects  in  it,  which  we  must  notice:  — 

(1)  The  danger  of  failures  in  business  would  still  exist. 
Some  factors  would  tend  to  lessen  this  danger  —  as,  the 
prevention  of  stock-watering,  misappropriation  of  funds, 
excessive  salaries,  and  the  unfair  competition  of  rivals.  But 
failures  could  no  longer  be  averted  by  squeezing  wages, 
neglecting  conditions  of  production,  or  lowering  the  quality 
of  goods.  The  employers  may  well  ask,  in  bitterness,  what 
right  the  Government  has  to  close  their  chances  of  high 
profits  when  it  leaves  the  chance  of  total  loss.  Private 
ownership  of  business,  still  retained  on  the  plan  we  are  con- 
sidering, must  involve  risk  of  bankruptcy,  with  its  economic 
waste  and  its  suffering. 

(2)  The  plant,  capital,  and  management  of  a  business 
would  still  be  entirely  at  the  disposal  of  the  owner,  and 
handed  down  in  his  family  or  to  partners  voluntarily  taken 
in.  The  son  of  a  capitalist,  who  inherits  the  business,  may 
be  by  no  means  the  most  deserving  or  efficient  person  to 
carry  it  on.  Industry  is  not  democratic  under  this  plan; 
justice  is  attained  as  a  compromise  between  the  interests  oi 
capitalists  and   laborers.    Class  antagonisms  are  still  fos' 


INDUSTRIAL  RECONSTRUCTION  389 

tered;  distrust  of  the  impartiality  of  the  government  com- 
mission would  continually  be  present,  and  might  at  any 
time  lead  to  actual  rebellion  and  violence. 

(3)  The  temptations  to  corruption  would  be  enormous. 
The  capitalists,  with  their  reserve  funds,  would  be  in  a  posi- 
tion to  bribe  or  unfairly  influence  any  susceptible  mem= 
bers  of  the  commissions;  and  with  the  danger  of  bank- 
ruptcy on  the  one  hand,  and  the  great  prizes  to  be  won  on 
the  other,  there  would  inevitably  result  —  in  the  present 
state  of  the  average  human  conscience  —  a  great  deal  of 
foul  play.  Commissioners  would  have  an  unlimited  oppor- 
tunity of  blackmailing  employers.  Labor  members  would 
pull  in  one  direction,  and  upper-class  members  in  another. 
The  strain  upon  public  morality  would  be  severe. 

IV.  Socialism?  Socialism  promises,  according  to  its 
adherents,  to  accomplish  all  the  good  results  of  government 
regulation,  while  obviating  its  defects.  It  behooves  us,  then, 
to  give  it  careful  and  unbiased  attention.  The  movement 
toward  it  is,  at  least,  one  of  the  most  significant  and  wide- 
spread movements  of  our  times,  evoking  on  the  one  hand 
extraordinary  enthusiasm  and  loyalty,  so  that  to  millions 
of  men  it  is  almost  a  religion,  and  on  the  other  hand  deep 
distrust,  impatient  contempt,  or  bitter  hostility.  Moreover, 
the  movement  is  steadily  growing;  we  must  recognize  that 
it  is  not  a  fad,  but  a  deep  current,  an  international  brother- 
hood that  numbers  in  its  ranks  many  able  and  intellectual 
men.  We  may  here  disregard  the  inadequate  economic 
theories  that  have  hampered  its  earlier  years,  and  the 
Utopian  dreams  that  have  been  published  under  its  name, 
and  consider  it  only  as  a  practical  program  for  remedying 
our  acknowledged  and  serious  industrial  evils. 

The  gist  of  the  socialist  proposal  is  that  all  industry  shaL^ 
be  made  democratic,  as  government  is  now  becoming  dem- 
ocratic all  over  the  earth.  All  plants  and  all  capital  are 


890  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

to  be  owned  by  the  State,  and  all  business  run  as  the  Post- 
Oflfice  is  run,  or  as  the  Panama  Canal  was  built.  The  man- 
agers of  each  industry  are  to  be  chosen  from  the  ranks, 
according  to  their  fitness,  for  proved  efficiency  and  knowl- 
edge of  the  business.  Everybody  will  be  upon  a  salary,  and 
the  opportunity  of  increasing  personal  profits  by  lowering 
wages,  cheating  the  public,  neglecting  evil  conditions  of 
production,  or  damaging  rivals,  will  be  absent.  Thus, 
instead  of  trying  by  an  elaborate  system  of  checks  to  keep 
within  due  bounds  the  greed  of  man,  the  possibility  of  satis- 
fying that  greed  is  definitely  removed,  and  all  earnings  made 
proportionate  to  Indus triousness  and  skill.  We  proceed  to 
summarize  the  advantages  that,  it  is  urged,  would  follow 
the  inauguration  of  this  industrial  democracy :  — 

(1)  All  industries  could  be  organized  and  centralized. 
A  vast  amount  of  human  effort  could  be  saved,  and  waste 
eliminated.  Business  would  no  longer,  as  so  often  now,  be 
hampered  for  lack  of  funds  to  carry  out  plans.  A  special 
staff  could  be  retained  to  invent  and  apply  new  ideas.  In 
short,  just  as  the  trusts  now  are  much  more  efficient  and 
economical  than  the  small  concerns  they  have  superseded, 
so  the  completely  organized  industries  of  a  socialistic  regime 
would  be,  we  are  told,  in  a  position  to  double  human  effi- 
ciency. If  the  postal  business  were  open  to  competition, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  we  should  be  paying  higher  rates 
to-day  for  a  much  less  efficient  service.  If  it  were  a  private 
monopoly,  some  one  would  probably  be  getting  enormous 
profits  out  of  it  —  profits  which  now  go  back  into  extending 
the  service.  The  labor  saved  by  industrial  unification  would 
be  available  for  a  thousand  other  undertakings  that  cry 
to  be  carried  out. 

(2)  All  the  industrial  wrongs  enumerated  in  the  preceding 
chapter  could,  it  is  asserted,  be  remedied,  and  all  problems 
adjusted,  with  comparatively  little  friction,  because  it  would 


INDUSTRIAL  RECOXSTHUCTION  891 

be  to  no  one's  particular  advantage  to  retard  such  better- 
ment. Those  in  control  of  every  business,  being  upon  a 
fixed  salary,  and  having  nothing  to  gain  by  squeezing  labor- 
ers or  public,  would  be  amenable  to  a  sense  of  pride  in  the 
honesty,  cleanliness,  and  efficiency  of  their  business,  and  the 
contentment  of  their  employees.  If  they  were  too  lazy  or 
stupid  to  respond  to  such  motives,  they  could  quickly  be 
superseded  in  office  by  men  who  were  more  ambitious  for  the 
fair  showing  of  their  branch  of  the  public  service. 

(3)  Opportunity  to  rise  to  the  control  of  a  business  would 
be  open  to  every  laborer  in  it.  The  sons  of  rich  men  could 
no  longer  step  easily  into  the  soft  berths,  whether  they  were 
deserving  or  not.  Proved  efficiency,  plus  popularity,  would 
be  the  road  to  success.  With  the  higher  wages  paid  to  labor 
(made  possible  partly  by  the  economic  saving  through  or- 
ganization, and  partly  by  cutting  out  the  private  fortunes 
now  made  out  of  industry),  every  boy  would  be  able  to  get  a 
thorough  vocational  education,  and  be  in  a  position  to  strive, 
if  he  is  ambitious,  for  leadership.  Industrial  power  would  be 
conferred,  directly  or  indirectly,  by  popular  vote;  business 
would  be  recognized  as  a  public  alffair,  and  nepotism  and 
hereditary  advantage  banished  from  it  as  they  have  been 
from  politics. 

(4)  The  risk  of  bankruptcies,  with  all  their  attendant 
evils,  would  be  done  away  with  entirely.  Business  would 
have  a  stability  unknown  to  our  present  individualistic 
industry,  and  business  men  would  be  freed  from  that  anxiety 
that  drives  so  many  to-day  to  a  premature  grave. 

(5)  All  speculation  in  stocks  would  be  likewise  eliminated. 
The  necessary  capital  for  any  new  undertaking  would  be 
provided  by  the  industrial  State,  and  the  undeserved  gains 
and  losses  of  our  present  system  of  private  investment 
would  come  to  an  end. 

(6)  Morally,  there  would  be  a  probable  gain  in  several 


892  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

ways.  The  elimination  of  private  profit  from  business  would 
give  freer  room  for  the  development  of  a  social  spirit  which 
is  now  choked  out  by  the  temptation  that  each  owner  of  a 
business  is  under  to  grab  all  that  he  can  for  himself.  There 
would  be  no  motive,  and  no  fortunes  available,  for,  at  least 
the  most  striking  forms  of  that  corruption  of  the  press 
which  is  such  a  grave  problem  to-day.  Municipal  theaters 
would  be  under  no  temptation  to  produce  nasty  plays.  All 
this  exploitation  of  human  weakness  and  passion  is  done 
because  it  pays  ;  if  the  men  at  the  top  were  on  a  salary  there 
would  be  no  such  inducement  to  cater  to  vicious  instincts. 
The  economic  pressure  that  now  pushes  so  many  girls  in  the 
direction  of  prostitution  would  be  relieved.  The  people  gen- 
erally would  be  dignified  and  educated  by  their  participation 
in  industrial,  as  now  in  political  decisions.  If  some  of  the 
tougher  strains  of  character  —  grit,  push,  endurance,  etc.  — 
would  be  less  fostered,  the  gentler  and  more  social  aspects 
of  character  would  find  better  soil. 

Whether  all  these  advantages  would  actually  accrue,  in 
the  degree  hoped  for,  it  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  know. 
There  are,  however,  at  least  two  grave  dangers  in  socialism 
which  must  be  squarely  faced :  — 

(1)  A  certain  degree  of  slackness  and  consequent  ineffi- 
ciency would  almost  inevitably  result  from  the  relaxing  of 
the  pressure  of  competition  and  the  removal  of  the  oppor- 
tunity for  unlimited  personal  profit.  Employees  and  man- 
agers of  state  and  municipal  undertakings  are  apt  to  take 
things  easily;  and  there  have  been  usually  waste  and  inertia 
and  extravagance  in  such  enterprises.  The  probable  loss  in 
grit,  push,  and  endurance,  mentioned  above,  might  prove 
serious. 

We  must  admit  that,  on  the  whole,  private  business  has 
been  managed  much  better  than  public  business,  both  in 


INDUSTRIAL  RECONSTRUCTION  393 

this  country  and  abroad.  To  a  considerable  extent,  however, 
the  inefficiency  of  municipal  and  state  undertakings  has 
been  due  to  the  clumsiness  and  corruption  of  political  sys- 
tems, and  can  be  cured  by  political  reform.  That  public 
affairs  can  be  managed  as  successfully  as  private  business 
has  been  demonstrated  on  many  occasions.  The  parcel  post 
offers  a  much  more  economical  service  than  the  express  com- 
panies ever  gave.  The  most  efficient  and  successful  engineer- 
ing undertaking  ever  accomplished  by  man  —  the  construc- 
tion of  the  Panama  Canal  —  was  a  thoroughgoing  socialistic 
achievement.  Moreover,  in  our  criticism  of  public  under- 
takings, we  are  apt  to  forget  how  slack  and  inefficient  the 
great  bulk  of  private  business  has  been;  our  attention  is 
caught  by  the  few  concerns  that  have  made  a  striking  suc- 
cess, and  we  overlook  the  vast  numbers  that  have  failed  or 
barely  kept  alive. 

Looking  at  the  matter  psychologically,  observation  does 
not  altogether  confirm  the  statement  that  men  need  an 
unlimited  possibility  of  financial  reward  to  work  hard.  The 
vast  majority  of  workers  to-day  are  on  salary;  and  on  the 
whole  they  probably  work  as  faithfully  as  the  few  at  the  top 
(continually  becoming  fewer)  who  have  the  spur  of  private 
profit.^  Not  all  capitalists  are  hard  workers;  much  of  the 
real  work  is  done  for  them  by  salaried  managers.  It  is  very 
questionable  if  doctors  and  lawyers,  who  work  for  profits, 
give  any  more  loyal  service  to  the  community  than  teachers, 
ministers,  or  nurses,  who  work  on  salary.  There  would  still 
be  the  need  of  earning  one's  living,  and  the  incentive  of 
rising  to  positions  of  higher  salary,  greater  authority,  and 


^  Cf.  this  testimony  in  regard  to  former  owners  of  stores  in  Minnesota 
and  Wisconsin  who  have  been  bought  out  and  retained  as  managers  by 
cooperative  societies:  "they  .  .  .  work  for  moderate  salaries,  and  in 
almost  all  cases  are  working  as  ardently  for  success  as  they  ever  did  for 
their  own  gain."  N.  O.  Nelson,  in  Outlook^  vol.  8D,  p.  527. 


394  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

wider  interest.  And,  after  all,  most  of  the  really  good  work 
of  the  world  is  done  on  honor,  from  the  normal  human 
pleasure  in  doing  things  well,  and  pride  in  being  known 
to  do  things  well.  When  freed  from  the  private  greed 
and  antisocial  class  feelings  which  now  inhibit  it,  this  zest 
in  efficient  work  and  loyal  service  might  receive  a  new 
impetus.  A  socialistic  regime  would  surely  make  a  busi- 
ness of  inculcating  in  its  public  schools  the  conception 
of  all  work  as  public  service;  and  the  pressure  of  public 
opinion  would  bear  more  heavily  upon  workers  —  as  there 
is  to-day  much  freer  criticism  of  public  than  of  private 
undertakings. 

But  even  if  there  should  be  a  considerable  increase  in 
slackness  and  a  decrease  in  jper  capita  production,  that 
economic  loss  might  be  more  than  made  up  by  the  saving 
of  labor  through  organization.  And  if  not,  it  is  true  that 
efficiency  is  not  the  only  good.  Considerations  of  humanity 
should  weigh  with  us  as  well  as  considerations  of  money- 
making;  if  socialism  can  cure  the  intolerable  evils  in  our 
present  selfish  and  chaotic  system,  a  certain  decrease  in 
production  might  not  be  too  great  a  price  to  pay. 

(2)  The  running  of  the  complicated  socialistic  machine 
would  involve  a  great  deal  of  friction,  with  consequent  dis- 
satisfaction and  dissension.  Problems  would  arise  on  all 
hands :  On  what  basis  should  the  wage-rate  in  this  industry 
and  in  that  be  determined?  How  much  of  the  public  moneys 
should  be  put  into  this  and  how  much  into  that  undertaking? 
Was  this  department  head  fair  in  discharging  this  man  and 
promoting  that  man?  Suspicion  of  bribery  and  graft  would 
continually  recur.  Bad  seasons  would  be  encountered, 
blunders  would  be  made,  overproduction  would  occur,  men 
would  be  thrown  out  of  employment  in  the  work  they  had 
chosen,  floods,  fires,  plagues,  and  other  disasters  would 
sweep  away  profits;  the  adjustment  of  these  losses  would  be 


INDUSTRIAL  RECONSTRUCTION  395 

an  enormously  delicate  matter.  At  present,  the  poor  are 
apt  to  feel  that  prosperity  for  them  is  hopeless;  under  a 
socialistic  regime  they  would  expect  it,  and  be  loath  to  see 
their  incomes  diminished  when  things  went  wrong.  Socialism 
would  require  a  great  deal  of  good  temper  and  willingness 
to  submit  to  decisions  which  seemed  unwise  or  unfair.  It  is 
highly  doubtful  if  human  nature  is  yet  good  enough  to  fit 
the  system. 

(3)  A  third  objection  to  socialism,  that  corruption  would 
be  increased,  is  a  much-debated  point.  There  would  be,  as 
now,  opportunity  for  falsification  of  accounts  and  embezzle- 
ment. Individual  promotions  would  too  often  hinge  upon 
personal  friendship  or  favors  received.  The  enormous  admin- 
istrative machinery  would  open  up  all  sorts  of  new  avenues 
to  personal  gain  at  the  expense  of  others,  which  unprincipled 
men  would  be  quick  to  take  advantage  of.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  no  great  private  fortunes  or  wealthy  corporations 
would  exist  to  bribe,  and  no  such  money-prizes  would  exist 
to  be  won  by  bribery  as  are  common  in  our  present  system. 
There  would  be  no  temptation  to  adulterate  goods,  and  less 
of  a  temptation  to  award  contracts  or  franchises  to  friends 
—  since  there  would  be  no  private  profit  in  it.  What  sup- 
ports our  political  rings  to-day  is,  above  all,  the  existence  of 
the  *' interests"  —  wealthy  corporations  that  are  making 
profits  enough  to  spare  large  sums  for  ''influencing"  legis- 
lation ;  these  "interests"  would  no  longer  exist.  On  the 
whole,  then,  the  amount  and  direction  of  corruption  under 
socialism  is  unpredictable;  but  its  possibility  should  give  us 
pause. 

The  other  general  objections  to  socialism  are  probably 
less  serious;  some  of  them  complete  misapprehensions.  It  is 
certainly  not  anti-Christian;  on  the  contrary,  there  are  those 
who  believe  that  it  is  the  necessary  expression  in  the  social 


396  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

life  of  the  Christian  spirit.^  It  is  not  "materialistic"  any 
more  than  any  industrial  system  must  necessarily  be.  It 
would  not  necessarily  destroy  private  property  or  lessen 
human  freedom,  except  in  the  one  matter  that  it  would  pre- 
vent private  ownership  of  the  instruments  of  industrial 
production  and  destroy  the  freedom  to  conduct  business  to 
private  advantage.  But  it  is  clear  that  it  would  involve  us 
in  all  sorts  of  complicated  and  delicate  problems  of  detail 
which  would  require  generations  for  satisfactory  solution 
and  which  might  never  be  satisfactorily  solved.  And  it 
might,  of  course,  lead  to  other  difficulties  now  unforeseen, 
graver  and  more  difficult  to  meet  than  we  now  realize. 
Surely,  then,  it  is  not  to  be  lightly  undertaken,  and  not  to  be 
undertaken  as  a  mere  revolt  of  the  lower  classes  against  their 
industrial  masters.  It  must  be  worked  out  in  great  detail, 
and  contrasted  with  every  possible  alternative,  before 
cautious  statesmen  will  consent  to  its  adoption.  For  it 
would  mean  a  revolutionary  change  of  enormous  propor- 
tions; and  it  would  not  be  easy  to  revert  to  the  earlier  order. 

In  this  discussion  the  term  ** socialism"  has  been  used  to 
cover  the  various  diverging  proposals  for  the  democratiza- 
tion of  industry.  There  are  many  such  plans,  more  or  less 
carefully  worked  out;  and  one  reason  why  democracy  in 
industry  is  so  slow  in  coming  is  the  conflict  between  these 
numerous  and  more  or  less  incompatible  schemes.  The  so- 
called  '^communism"  of  the  Russian  Soviet  government  and 
the  Third  International,  the  French  Syndicalist  movement, 
the  National  Guilds  movement  of  England,  and  the  Plumb 
plan  proposed  for  the  railroads  of  the  United  States,  are 
among  the  most  conspicuous  of  contemporary  tendencies. 
There  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  the  world  is  in  for  a  good 
deal  of  experimenting  along  these  lines.  And  most  disin- 
terested students  will  welcome  such  experimentation.   It  is 

*  Cf.,  for  example,  W.  Rauschenbusch,  Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis. 


INDUSTRIAL  RECONSTRUCTION  397 

probable  that  industrial  democracy  will  some  day  be  as 
universal  as  political  democracy;  indeed,  the  arguments 
against  the  former  are  largely  identical  with  the  arguments 
against  the  latter  —  and  the  latter  has  now  been  almost 
universally  adopted. 

But  there  are  two  things  to  be  borne  in  mind.  First,  that 
there  is  no  simple  and  sweeping  panacea  for  our  industrial 
ills;  the  patient  thought  and  experimentation  and  effort  of 
generations  will  be  required  before  a  satisfactory  and  stable 
equilibrium  is  attained.  And  secondly,  that  the  democratiza- 
tion of  industry  ought  not  to  come  by  revolution,  as  the  re- 
sult of  class-warfare,  because  that  will  involve  bloodshed, 
bitter  antagonism,  and  a  long  period  of  chaos;  it  might  ruin 
our  civilization  altogether.  For  the  opposition  to  revolu- 
tion will  be  as  fierce  as  the  passion  for  it.  Whatever  changes 
are  to  be  made  in  our  industrial  system  must  be  made  by 
due  process  of  law,  as  a  result  of  long  and  careful  public 
discussion.  Evolution,  not  revolution,  should  be  our  watch- 
word; the  ballot,  not  the  bullet. 

Competition  vs.  concentration:  C.  R.  Van  Hise,  Concentration 
and  Control,  chap.  i.  J.  W.  Jenks,  The  Trust  Problem.  E.  von  Halle, 
Trusts  and  Industrial  Combinations.  F.  C.  McVey,  Modern  Indus-' 
Irialism.  S.  C.  T.  Dodd,  Combinations,  their  Use  and  Abu^e.  R.  T. 
Ely,  Monopolies  and  Trusts.  C.  N.  Fay,  Big  Business  and  Govern" 
ment.  Edmond  Kelly,  Twentieth  Century  Socialism,  bk.  ii,  chap,  ii; 
bk.  Ill,  chap.  I.  A.  J.  Eddy,  The  New  Competition.  Atlantic  Monthly, 
vol.  79,  p.  377.  Forum,  vol.  8,  p.  61.  Journal  of  Political  Economy, 
vol.  20,  p.  358.  L.  Stephen,  Social  Rights  and  Duties:  The  Morality 
of  Competition.  W.  H.  Hamilton,  Current  Economic  Problems,  pp. 
148-55,  395-448.  Quarterly  Journal  of  Economics,  vol,  28,  p.  G64. 
Ilibbert  Journal,  vol.  9,  p.  324. 

Labor-unions  and  strikes:  J.  R.  Commons,  Trade-Unionism  and 
Labor  Problems.  Carlton,  History  and  Problems  of  Organized  Labor. 
S.  and  B.  Webb,  Industrial  Democracy;  History  of  Trade-Unionism. 
J.  Mitchell,  Organized  Labor.  C.  R.  Henderson,  Social  Spirit  in 
America,  chap.  ix.  Jane  Addams,  Newer  Ideals  of  Peace,  chap.  v. 
Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  109,  p.  758.    H.  R.  Seager,  Introduction  to 


398  PUBLIC  MOILVLITY 

Economics,  chap.  xxi.  F.  W.  Taussig,  Principles  of  Economics, 
chap.  55.  G.  G.  Groat,  Organized  Labor  in  America.  A.  Tridon, 
The  New  Unionism.  H.  F.  Ward,  The  Labor  Movement. 

Profit-sharing:  W.  H.  Tolman,  Social  Engineering,  chap.  vii. 
Seager,  op.  cit.,  chap,  xxvi,  sec.  281.  Adams  and  Sumner,  Labor 
Problems,  chap.  ix.  N.  P.  Gilman,  Profit  Sharing;  A  Dividend 
to  Labor.  Outlook,  vol.  106,  p.  627.  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  219,  p. 
509.  A.  W.  Burritt,  etc.,  Profit-Sharing,  its  Principles  and  Practice. 

Cooperation:  G.  J.  Holyoake,  History  of  Cooperation.  C.  R.  Fay, 
Cooperation  at  Home  and  Abroad.  Adams  and  Sumner,  Labor 
Problems,  chap.  x.  Arena,  vol.  36,  p.  200;  vol.  40,  p.  632.  H.  R. 
Seager,  op.  cit.,  sec.  282.  F.  W.  Taussig,  op.  cit.,  chap.  59.  James 
Ford,  Cooperation  in  New  England. 

Consumers'  leagues:  Publications  of  the  National  Consumers* 
League  (106  East  Nineteenth  Street,  New  York  City). 

Government  regulation:  J.  W.  Jenks,  op.  cit..  Appendices.  C.  R. 
Van  Hise,  op.  cit.,  chaps,  iii-v.  F.  W.  Taussig,  op.  cit.,  chaps.  62,  63. 
H.  R.  Seager,  op.  cit.,  chap.  xxv.  C.  L.  King,  Regulation  of  Muni- 
cipal Utilities.  J.  B.  and  J.  M.  Clark,  Control  of  the  Trusts.  E.  M. 
Phelps,  Federal  Control  of  Interstate  Corporations.  Atlantic  Monthly, 
vol.  Ill,  p.  433.  Outlook,  vol.  99,  p.  649;  vol.  100,  pp.  574,  690; 
vol.  101,  p.  353;  vol.  103,  p.  476.  North  American  Review,  vol. 
197,  pp.  62,  222,  350.  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  vol.  23,  p. 
158;  vol.  26,  p.  323.  Journal  of  Political  Economy,  vol.  20,  pp.  309 
ff.,  574/.   C.  McCarthy,  TJie  Wisconsin  Idea. 

Socialism:  Edmond  Kelly,  Tiventieth  Century  Socialism.  H.  G. 
Wells,  New  Worlds  for  Old.  J.  Spargo,  Socialism.  M.  Hillquit, 
Socialism  in  Theory  and  Practice.  A.  Schiiffle,  The  Quintessence  of 
Socialism.  F.  W.  Taussig,  op.  cit.,  chaps.  64,  65.  J.  Rae,  Contem- 
porary Socialism.  R.  T.  Ely,  Socialism.  W.  G.  Towler,  Socialism, 
in  Local  Government.  H.  R.  Seager,  op.  cit.,  sec.  282.  N.  P.  Gilman, 
Socialism  and  the  American  Spirit.  R.  Hunter,  Socialists  at  Work. 
Journal  of  Political  Economy,  vol.  14,  p.  257.  W.  E.  Walling,  Social- 
ism as  It  Is,  and  other  books.  R.  W.  Sellars,  The  Next  Step  in  De- 
mocracy. A.  J.  Balfour,  etc.,  The  Case  against  Socialism.  Bertrand 
Russell,  Proposed  Roads  to  Freedom.  G.  H.  D.  Cole,  The  Meaning 
of  Industrial  Freedom,  and  other  books.  Beckitt  and  Rechhofer. 
The  Meaning  of  National  Guilds.  W.  T.  Goode,  Bolshevism  at  Work. 
-T.  MacKaye,  Americanized  Socialism. 


CHAPTER  XXVm 

LIBERTY  AND  LAW 

We  have  spoken  of  the  practical  defects  and  dangers 
inherent  in  the  various  proposals  that  look  to  the  rectifica- 
tion of  industrial  wrongs.  But  there  is  one  source  of  oppo- 
sition to  these  proposals  that  requires  more  extended  consid- 
eration —  the  fear  that  they  —  and  especially  socialism  — 
unduly  threaten  that  ideal  of  personal  liberty  which  our 
/athers  so  passionately  served  and  we  have  come  to  look 
upon  as  the  cornerstone  of  our  prosperity.  What  is  this  ideal 
of  liberty,  and  how  should  it  affect  our  efforts  at  industrial 
regeneration? 

What  are  the  essential  aspects  of  the  ideal  of  liberty? 

Throughout  a  long  stretch  of  human  history  one  of  the 
most  vexing  obstacles  to  general  happiness  and  progress  has 
been  the  irresponsible  power  of  sovereigns  and  oligarchies. 
To  generations  it  has  seemed  that  if  freedom  from  selfish 
tyranny  could  but  be  won,  the  millennium  would  be  at  hand. 
Our  heroes  have  been  those  who  fought  against  despots  for 
the  rights  of  the  people;  we  measure  progress  by  such  mile- 
stones as  the  Magna  Charta,  the  French  Revolution,  the 
American  Declaration  of  Independence.  To  this  day  we 
engrave  the  word  ''liberty  '*  on  our  coins;  and  the  converging 
multitudes  from  Europe  look  up  eagerly  to  the  great  statue 
that  welcomes  them  in  New  York  Harbor  and  symbolizes 
for  them  the  freedom  that  they  have  often  suffered  so  much 
to  gain.  In  Mrs.  Hemans's  hymn,  in  Patrick  Henry's 
famous  speech,  in  Mary  Antin's  wonderful  autobiography, 


400  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

The  Promised  Landy  we  catch  glimpses  of  that  devotion  to 
liberty  which,  it  is  now  said,  we  are  jeopardizing  by  our 
increasing  mass  of  legislative  restraints  and  propose  to 
banish  for  good  and  all  by  an  indefinite  increase  in  the  powers 
of  the  State.  More  than  a  generation  ago  Mill  wrote :  "There 
is  in  the  world  at  large  an  increasing  inclination  to  stretch 
unduly  the  powers  of  society  over  the  individual,  both  by 
the  force  of  opinion  and  even  by  that  of  legislation;  and  as 
the  tendency  of  all  the  changes  taking  place  in  the  world  is 
to  strengthen  society,  and  diminish  the  power  of  the  indi- 
vidual, this  encroachment  is  not  one  of  the  evils  which  tend 
spontaneously  to  disappear,  but,  on  the  contrary,  to  grow 
more  and  more  formidable."  ^  Not  a  few  observers  to-day 
are  reiterating  this  note  of  alarm  with  increasing  emphasis. 
Are  their  fears  well  founded  ? 

We  may  at  once  agree  in  applauding  the  liberty  worship 
of  our  fathers  and  of  our  contemporaries  in  the  more  back- 
ward countries.  No  secure  steps  in  civilization  can  be  taken 
until  liberty  of  body,  of  movement,  and  of  possession  are 
guaranteed;  there  must  be  no  fear  of  arbitrary  execution, 
arrest,  or  confiscation.  To  this  must  be  added  liberty  of 
conscience,  of  speech,  and  of  worship;  the  right  of  free 
assembly,  a  free  press,  and  that  "freedom  to  worship  God" 
that  the  Pilgrims  sought.  Wherever  these  rights,  so  funda- 
mental to  human  happiness,  are  impugned,  "Liberty!"  is 
still  the  fitting  rallying-cry;^  and  we  must  confess  that  free- 

1  Essay  on  Liberty,  Introductory. 

2  The  exact  limits  within  which  freedom  of  speech  must  be  allowed  are 
debatable,  (a)  Speech  which  incites  to  crime,  to  lawbreaking,  to  sexual 
and  other  vice,  must  be  prevented;  and  (b)  slander,  the  public  utterance  of 
grossly  disparaging  statements  concerning  any  person,  without  reasonable 
e\ndence  of  their  truth.  May  we  attempt  to  stifle  the  utterance  of  (c)  such 
other  untruths  as  are  inexcusable  in  the  light  of  our  common  knowledge? 
There  are  certainly  many  matters  where  there  is  no  longer  room  for  legiti' 
mate  difference  of  opinion;  and  the  general  diffusion  of  correct  knowledge  is 
greatly  retarded  by  the  silly  utterances  of  uninformed  people.  Yet  to  draw 


LIBERTY  AND  LAW  401 

dom  of  the  press  and  of  speech  have  been  seriously  curbed 
during  the  last  few  years,  almost  everywhere.  But  we  must 
not  forget  that  liberty  is  a  means,  not  an  end  in  itself,  to  be 
restricted  in  so  far  as  may  be  necessary  for  the  greatest  happi- 
ness. There  are  no  such  things  as  '^natural  rights"  which 
the  community  is  bound  to  respect;  liberty  must  be  granted 
the  individual  so  far,  and  only  so  far,  as  it  does  not  impede 
the  general  welfare.  We  do  not  hesitate  to  end  the  liberty, 
or  even  to  take  the  life,  of  those  we  deem  dangerous  to 
society.  We  do  not  hesitate  to  confiscate  the  land  which  we 
deem  necessary  for  a  highway  or  railroad  or  pubhc  building. 
Indeed,  we  hedge  personal  liberty  about  with  a  thousand 
restrictions  by  general  consent,  in  the  realization  that  public 
interests  must  come  before  private.  W^e  have  no  need  to 
discuss  the  doctrine  of  anarchism^  —  unrestricted  liberty  — 
since  the  general  chaos  that  would  result  therefrom,  in  the 
present  stage  of  human  nature,  is  sufficiently  apparent. 
Liberty  can  never  be  absolute. 

Indeed,  there  has  been  a  curious  reversal  of  situation. 
The  older  cry  of  liberty  that  stirs  us  was  a  cry  of  the 
oppressed  masses  against  their  masters;  now  it  is  a  slogan 
of  the  privileged  upper  classes  against  that  increasing  popu- 
lar legislation  which  restricts  their  powers.  Kings  are  now 
but  figureheads,  if  they  linger  at  all,  in  our  modern  democ- 
racies; governments  are  not  irresponsible  masters  of  the 
people,  they  are  instruments  for  carrying  out  the  popular 
will.    The   real   tyrants   now,   those   whose   irresponsible 

the  line  here  is  so  diflacult  that  we  must  probably  tolerate  this  evil  forever 
rather  than  run  the  risk  of  stifling  some  generally  unsuspected  truth. 

^  For  an  eloquent  defense  of  anarchism  see  Tolstoy's  writings;  here  is  a 
sample  statement:  "For  a  Christian  to  promise  to  subject  himself  to  any 
government  whatsoever  —  a  subjection  which  may  be  considered  the  foun- 
dation of  state  life  —  is  a  direct  negation  of  Christianity."  (Kingdom  oj 
God,  chap,  ix.)  Cf .  this  utterance  of  one  of  the  Chicago  anarchists  of  1886. 
"Whoever  prescribes  a  rule  of  action  for  another  to  obey  is  a  tyrant; 
usurper,  and  an  enemy  of  liberty." 


402  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

authority  is  dangerous  to  the  masses,  are  the  kings  of  indus- 
trj^;  if  the  cry  of  "hberty '*  is  to  be  raised  again,  it  should  be 
raised,  according  to  all  historical  precedent,  in  behalf  of  the 
slaves  of  modern  industry  rather  than  in  behalf  of  the  fortu- 
nate few  who  give  up  so  grudgingly  the  practical  powers 
they  have  usurped.  There  were  those,  indeed,  who  fought 
passionately  for  the  divine  right  of  kings,  those  who  died  to 
maintain  the  right  of  a  white  man  to  hold  negroes  as  slaves; 
there  are  those  to-day  who  with  a  truly  religious  fervor 
uphold  the  right  of  the  capitalistic  class  to  manage  the 
industries  of  the  country  at  their  own  sweet  will,  unham- 
pered by  such  legislative  restrictions  as  the  majority  may 
deem  expedient  for  the  general  welfare.  But  it  is  a  travesty 
on  the  sacred  word  "liberty"  that  it  should  be  thus  invoked 
to  uphold  the  prerogatives  of  the  favored  few.  Liberty,  in 
the  sense  in  which  it  is  properly  an  ideal  for  man,  connotes 
the  right  to  all  such  forms  of  activity  as  are  consonant 
with  the  greatest  general  happiness,  and  to  no  others.  It 
implies  the  right  not  to  be  oppressed,  not  the  right  to 
oppress.  Mere  freedom  of  contract  is  not  real  freedom,  if  the 
alternative  be  to  starve;  such  formal  freedom  may  be 
practical  slavery.  The  real  freedom  is  freedom  to  live  as 
befits  a  man;  and  it  is  precisely  because  such  freedom  is 
beyond  the  grasp  of  multitudes  to-day  that  our  system  of 
"free  contract"  is  discredited;  it  offers  the  name  of  Hberty 
without  the  reality. 

But  apart  from  this  questionable  appeal  to  the  ideal  of 
liberty,  there  are  not  a  few  who  sincerely  believe,  on 
grounds  of  practical  expediency,  that  legislation  ought  not 
to  interfere  any  more  than  proves  absolutely  necessary  with 
the  conduct  of  industry.  This  scheme  of  individualism  we 
will  now  consider. 


LIBERTY  AND  LAW  403 

The  ideal  of  individualism. 

The  individualistic,  or  laissez-faire,  ideal  dates  perhaps 
from  Rousseau  and  the  French  doctrinaires;  its  best  known 
representatives  in  English  speech  are  Mill  and  Spencer. 
Dewey  and  Tufts  have  pithily  expressed  it  as  follows:  "The 
moral  end  of  poHticaJ  institutions  and  measures  is  the  maxi- 
mum possible  freedom  of  the  individual  consistent  with  his 
not  interfering  with  like  freedom  on  the  part  of  other  indi- 
viduals." ^  Its  leading  arguments  may  be  presented  and 
answered,  summarily,  as  follows :  — 

(1)  Legislation  has  so  often  been  mischievous  that  it  is 
well  to  have  as  little  of  it  as  possible.  The  masses  are  unedu- 
cated, the  prey  of  impulse  and  passion;  politics  are  corrupt; 
to  submit  the  genius  of  free  entrepreneurs  to  the  clumsy  and 
ill-fitted  yoke  of  a  popularly  wrought  legal  control  is  to 
stifle  their  enterprise  and  interfere  with  their  chances  of 
success.  After  all,  every  one  knows  his  own  needs  best;  and 
if  we  leave  people  alone,  they  will  secure  their  own  weKare 
better  than  if  we  try  to  dictate  to  them  how  they  shall  seek 
it.  "Out  of  the  fourteen  thousand  odd  acts  which,  in  our 
own  country,  have  been  repealed,  from  the  date  of  the  Stat- 
ute of  Merton  down  to  1872  .  .  .  how  many  have  been 
repealed  because  they  were  mischievous?  .  .  .  Suppose 
that  only  three  thousand  of  these  acts  were  abolished  after 
proved  injuries  had  been  caused,  which  is  a  low  estimate. 
What  shall  we  say  of  these  three  thousand  acts  which  have 
been  hindering  human  happiness  and  increasing  human 

misery;  now  for  years,  now  for  generations,  now  for  centu- 
ries?" ^ 

But  to  admit  that  much  legislation  has  been  blundering 
is  not  to  admit  that  the  principle  of  social  control  is  wrong. 
Our  political  system  must,  indeed,  be  made  more  reliable, 

*  Ethics,  p.  483.  *  H.  Spencer,  Principles  of  Ethics,  pt.  iv,  sec.  131. 


404  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

and  proper  checks  must  be  placed  in  the  way  of  overhasty 
and  ill-considered  lawmaking.  But  it  is  not  always  true  that 
the  individual  is  the  best  judge  of  his  own  ultimate  interests; 
and  it  is  demonstrably  untrue  that  the  pursuit  by  each  of 
what  he  deems  best  for  himself  will  bring  the  greatest  happi- 
ness for  all.  The  stronger  and  more  favorably  situated  will 
take  advantage  of  their  position  and  resources;  the  weaker, 
though  theoretically  free,  will  in  reality  be  under  the  handi- 
cap of  poverty,  ignorance,  hunger.  Such  a  system  is  inevit- 
ably vicious  in  its  moral  effects.  To  say  that  in  a  popular 
government  legislation  cannot  properly  standardize  prac- 
tice, cannot  formulate  a  higher  code  of  public  morality  than 
men  can  be  depended  upon  to  attain  if  unrestrained,  is 
unwarrantably  to  discredit  democracy.  If  the  laws  are  bad, 
improve  them.  If  the  public  is  uneducated,  educate  it.  If 
our  system  gives  us  poor  lawmakers,  change  the  system.  But 
to  give  up  the  attempt  at  legal  control,  to  leave  things  as 
they  are  —  or  rather,  to  leave  them  to  go  from  bad  to  worse, 
is  unthinkable. 

(2)  Too  much  legislation  stifles  individuality,  drags 
genius  down  to  the  dead  level  of  average  ideas,  tends  to 
produce  an  unprogressive  uniformity  of  practice.  It 
imposes  the  conceptions  of  the  past  upon  the  future.  "If 
the  measures  have  any  effect  at  all,  the  effect  must  in  part 
be  that  of  causing  some  likeness  among  the  individuals;  to 
deny  this  is  to  deny  that  the  process  of  moulding  is  operative. 
But  in  so  far  as  uniformity  results  advance  is  retarded. 
Every  one  who  has  studied  the  order  of  nature  knows  that 
without  variety  there  can  be  no  progress."  ^  "Persons  of 
genius,  it  is  true,  are,  and  are  always  likely  to  be,  a  small 
minority;  but  in  order  to  have  them  it  is  necessary  to  pre- 
serve the  soil  in  which  they  grow.  Genius  can  only  breathe 
freely  in  an  atmosphere  of  freedom.  ...  It  is  important  to 
*  H.  Spencer,  o'p.  cit.,  sec.  138. 


LIBERTY  AND  LAW  405 

give  the  freest  scope  possible  to  uncustomary  things,  in 
order  that  it  may  in  time  appear  which  of  these  are  fit  to  be 
converted  into  customs."  ^ 

But  the  intention  of  social  legislation  is  to  check  only 
such  individual  action  as  is  demonstrably  detrimental;  the 
uniformity  produced  will  be  only  a  uniform  absence  of 
flagrant  wrongs  and  adoption  of  such  positive  precautions 
as  will  make  the  detection  and  checking  of  these  harmful 
acts  easy.  Beyond  this  minimum  uniformity  (which,  how- 
ever, must  include  an  enormous  number  of  details,  so  mani- 
fold have  the  possibilities  of  wrongdoing  become)  there  will 
on  any  system  be  ample  range  for  the  development  of  new 
methods  and  processes.  Whatever  danger  there  once  was 
in  choking  individual  initiative  by  needlessly  paralyzing 
restrictions,  will  be,  in  the  long  run,  neghgible  in  an  age  of 
omnivorous  reading  and  free  discussion,  and  in  a  land  whose 
conscious  ideal  is  improvement,  new  invention,  progress. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  chiefly  through  legislation  that  new 
methods  of  social  practice  become  diffused.  Each  of  our 
forty-eight  States  is  experimenting  in  social  guidance,  trying 
to  thwart  this  or  that  sin,  to  remedy  this  or  that  wrong,  to 
work  out  a  plan  by  which  men  can  happily  cooperate  in  our 
complex  public  life.  The  process  of  evolving  an  efficient  and 
frictionless  social  machine,  instead  of  being  retarded  by  this 
activity  of  lawmaking,  is  actually  accelerated  thereby. 
Private  business  tends  to  fall  into  ruts;  and  one  man's  ideals 
are  blocked  by  lack  of  cooperation  from  others.  Legislation 
tends  not  only  to  preserve  the  best  of  past  experiments;  but, 
goaded  by  the  zeal  of  reformers,  and  pushed  by  political 
parties,  to  drag  complacent  and  inert  individuals  along  new 
and  untried  paths.  The  greatest  field  for  genius  lies  to-day 
in  devising  successful  constructive  legislation;  and  the 
greatest  hope  for  progress  in  this  era  of  mutual  dependence 
^  J.  S.  Mill,  On  Liberty,  chap.  m. 


i06  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

lies  in  the  winning  of  a  majority  for  some  social  scheme  that 
must  be  generally  adopted  if  at  all. 

(3)  Laws,  however  beneficent,  which  rise  above  the  gen- 
eral conscience  of  the  people  are  undesirable;  character 
should  precede  legislation.  "To  conform  to  custom,  merely 
as  custom,  does  not  educate  or  develop  in  [a  man]  any  of  the 
qualities  which  are  the  distinctive  endowment  of  a  human 
being.  .  .  .  He  who  does  anything  because  it  is  the  custom 
makes  no  choice.  He  gains  no  practice  either  in  discerning 
or  in  desiring  what  is  best.  The  mental  and  moral,  like  the 
muscular  powers,  are  improved  only  by  being  used.  .  .  . 
It  is  possible  that  he  might  be  guided  in  some  good  path,  and 
kept  out  of  harm's  way,  without  [using  his  own  judgment, 
powers  of  decision,  self-control,  etc.]  But  what  will  be  his 
comparative  worth  as  a  human  being?  It  really  is  of  import- 
ance, not  only  what  men  do,  but  also  what  manner  of  men 
they  are  that  do  it."  ^ 

A  little  common  sense  will  show  us,  however,  that  there 
are,  and  always  will  be,  plenty  of  occasions  for  exercising 
our  moral  muscle,  however  closely  we  hedge  in  the  field  of 
legitimate  activity.  Prone  to  temptation  as  men  are,  and 
beset  by  a  thousand  wrong  impulses,  we  may  well  seek  to 
block  this  and  that  path  of  possible  wrongdoing  without  fear 
of  turning  them  mechanically  into  saints.  On  the  contrary, 
we  should  hasten  to  use  the  experience  of  the  past  to  avert 
needless  temptations  from  the  men  of  the  future.  Our  ex- 
perience has  been  costly  enough;  and  if  it  has  revealed  its 
lessons  too  late  to  save  contemporary  social  life,  at  least  it 
bhould  serve  as  warning  for  our  sons.  To  sacrifice  right  con- 
duct to  moral  gymnastics  is  to  set  up  the  means  as  more 
important  than  the  end;  every  good  act  that  can  be  lifted 
from  the  plane  of  moral  struggle  and  put  securely  on  the 
plane  of  habit  is  a  step  in  human  progress,  and  leaves  men 
^  J.  S.  MiU,  op.  cit.,  chap.  iii. 


LIBERTY  AND  LAW  407 

freer  to  grapple  with  the  remaining  temptations.  If  you 
wash  to  educate  men  up  to  a  law,  put  it  upon  the  statute 
books  if  you  can,  compel  attention  to  it  and  discussion  of 
the  reasons  fro  and  coriy  show  its  practical  workings;  it  is  far 
easier  to  educate  conscience  up  to  an  existing  law  than 
beyond  it.  Moreover,  it  must  be  said  that  those  who  prefer 
to  see  men  left  to  think  things  out  anew  for  themselves, 
without  the  restraint  and  guidance  of  the  law,  show  a  singu- 
lar callousness  toward  those  whom  their  action,  if  they 
choose  wrongly,  will  hurt.  If  we  could  trust  men  to  choose 
aright  —  but  we  cannot;  and  men  must  be  protected  against 
their  own  stupidity  and  weakness,  and  that  of  others,  by 
the  collective  wisdom  and  will. 

(4)  Individualism  makes  for  prosperity.  Offering  a  fair 
chance  to  all,  it  brings  the  best  to  the  top;  the  fittest  survive, 
and  win  the  positions  of  power;  the  community  as  a  whole  is, 
then,  in  the  end  advantaged.  "Free  competition  in  profits 
coordinates  industrial  efficiency  and  industrial  reward.  .  .  . 
This  is  equality  of  opportunity,  through  which  every  man  is 
rewarded  according  to  his  worth  to  the  consumer."  ^ 

Unfortunately,  however,  it  is  those  who  are  fittest  to 
serve  not  the  community  but  their  own  interests  that  have 
the  best  chance  to  survive  —  the  clever,  the  privileged,  the 
unscrupulous.  Nor  is  there  equality  of  opportunity  where 
some  will  not  play  fair  and  others  have  a  long  start.  The 
individualistic  struggle  makes  for  the  selection  of  a  type  of 
greedy,  self -centered  man,  with  httle  sense  of  social  respon- 
sibility. Even  granted  that  the  men  who  reach  the  top  are 
the  men  best  fitted  to  manage  the  industries  of  the  country, 
this  method  of  selection  of  leaders  is  too  wasteful  of  strength, 
too  hard  on  the  unsuccessful,  to  be  generally  profitable. 
The  prosperity  of  modern  industry  is  due  not  primarily  to 
its  chaotic  plan  of  individual  effort  and  cross-purposes,  but 
»  F.  Y.  Gladney,  in  the  OutlooK  vol.  101,  p.  261. 


408  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

to  the  measure  of  cooperation  we  have  nevertheless  attained, 
with  its  consequent  division  and  speciaHzation  of  labor  and 
large-scale  production,  aided  by  the  extraordinary  develop- 
ment of  invention  and  machinery. 

The  ideal  of  legal  control. 

The  epoch  of  ultra-individualism,  of  what  Huxley  called 
**  administrative  nihilism,"  is  rapidly  passing.  Jane  Addams 
speaks  of  "the  inadequacy  of  those  eighteenth-century 
ideals  .  .  .  the  breakdown  of  the  machinery  which  they 
provided,"  pointing  out  that  "that  worldly  wisdom  which 
counsels  us  to  know  life  as  it  is  "  discounts  the  assumption 
"that  if  only  the  people  had  freedom  they  would  walk  con^ 
tinuously  in  the  paths  of  justice  and  righteousness."  ^  H.  G. 
Wells  remarks,  "We  do  but  emerge  now  from  a  period  of 
deliberate  happy-go-lucky  and  the  influence  of  Herbert 
Spencer,  who  came  near  raising  public  shiftlessness  to  the 
dignity  of  a  natural  philosophy.  Everything  would  adjust 
itself  —  if  only  it  was  left  alone."  ^  It  is  becoming  clear  that 
we  cannot  trust  to  education  and  the  conscience  of  individ- 
uals to  right  matters,  not  only  because  as  yet  we  provide  no 
moral  education  of  any  consequence  for  our  youth,  but 
because,  if  we  did,  the  temptations  in  a  world  where  every 
man  is  free  to  grab  for  himself  would  still  be  almost  irresist- 
ible. 

But  there  are  two  positive  arguments  for  the  extension  of 
legal  control  that  clinch  the  matter :  — 

(1)  Without  the  support  of  the  law  it  is  often  impossible 
for  the  conscientious  man  to  act  in  a  purely  social  spirit. 
The  competition  of  those  who  are  less  answerable  to  moral 
motives  forces  him  to  lower  his  own  ideals  if  he  would  not  see 
his  business  ruined.    The  employer  of  child  labor  in  one 

^  Newer  Ideals  of  Peace,  pp.  31-32. 

*  Social  Forces  in  England  and  America,  p.  80. 


LIBERTY  AND   LAW  409 

factory  cannot  afford  to  hire  adults,  at  their  higher  wage, 
until  all  the  other  factories  give  up  the  cheaper  labor  also. 
Where  sweat-shop  labor  produces  cheap  clothing  for  some 
manufacturers,  the  more  scrupulous  are  undersold.  One 
employer  cannot,  unless  he  is  unusually  prosperous,  raise 
the  wages  of  his  employees  or  shorten  their  hours  until  his 
competitors  do  likewise.  Improvement  of  conditions  must 
take  place  all  along  the  Une  or  not  at  all.  And  since  unani- 
mous voluntary  consent  is  practically  impossible  to  obtain, 
and  of  precarious  duration  if  obtained,  the  legal  enforcement 
of  common  standards  is  necessitated. 

(2)  Men  generally  are  willing  to  bind  themselves  by  law 
to  higher  codes  than  they  will  live  up  to  if  not  bound.  In 
their  reflective  moments,  when  they  are  deciding  how  to 
vote,  temptations  are  less  insistent  and  ideals  stronger  than 
when  they  are  confronting  concrete  situations.  To  vote  for 
a  law  which  will  restrain  others,  and  incidentally  one's  self, 
comes  easier  than  to  make  a  purely  personal  sacrifice  that 
leaves  general  practice  unaltered.  To  realize  that  this  is 
true,  we  need  but  look  at  the  remarkable  ethical  gains  made 
now  year  by  year  through  laws  voted  for  by  many  of  the 
very  men  whose  practice  had  hitherto  been  upon  a  lower 
moral  level.  Very  many  evils  that  once  seemed  fastened 
upon  society  have  been  thus  legislated  out  of  existence.^ 
And  if  the  industrial  situation  still  seems  wretched,  it  is 
because,  in  our  swift  advance,  new  evils  are  arising  about  as 
fast  as  older  evils  are  eradicated.  The  law  necessarily  lags 
behind  the  spread  of  abuses,  so  that  "there  will  probably 
always  be  a  running  duel  between  anti-social  action  and 
legislation  designed  to  check  it.  Novel  methods  of  corrup- 
tion will  constantly  require  novel  methods  of  correction  .  .  . 
\But]  this  constant  development  of  the  law  should  make 

*  For  a  vivid  picture  of  earlier  industrial  conditions  which  would  not 
now  be  tolerated,  see  Charles  lleade's  Put  Yourselj  in  Ilis  Place. 


410  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

corrupt  practices  increasingly  difficult  for  the  less  gifted 
rascals  who  must  always  constitute  the  great  majority  of 
would-be  offenders."  ^ 

The  law  can  never,  of  course,  cover  the  whole  field  of 
human  conduct;  it  represents,  in  Stevenson's  phrase,*' that 
modicum  of  morality  which  can  be  squeezed  out  of  the  ruck 
of  mankind."  Unnecessary  extension  of  the  law  is  cumber- 
some, expensive,  and  provocative  of  impatience  and  rebel- 
lion. Moreover,  there  is  always  some  minimum  of  danger  of 
injustice  in  attempting  legal  constraint;  the  law  itself,  as 
approved  by  the  majority,  may  be  unfair,  or  its  application 
to  the  concrete  case  may  be  unfair.  The  individualists  are 
right  in  feeling  that  men  must  be  left  alone,  wherever  the 
possible  results  are  not  too  dangerous.  But  no  hard-and-fast 
line  can  be  drawn  between  activities  that  must  be  left  free 
and  those  which  must  be  regulated.  Such  apparently  per- 
sonal matters  as  the  use  of  opium  or  alcohol  must  be  checked 
—  because  the  general  happiness  is,  in  the  end,  greatly  and 
obviously  enhanced  by  such  restraint.  But  there  will  always 
be,  beyond  the  law,  a  wide  field  for  the  satisfaction  o£  per- 
sonal tastes  and  the  practice  of  generosity.  There  is  no 
double  standard;  if  an  act  is  legally  right  and  morally  wrong, 
that  simply  means  that  it  lies  beyond  the  boundaries  of  the 
limited  field  which  the  law  covers.  The  extension  of  that 
field  is  a  matter  of  practical  expediency  in  each  type  of  situ- 
ation; beyond  that  field,  but  working  to  the  same  ends,  the 
forces  of  education  and  public  opinion  are  alone  available.^ 

Should  existing  laws  always  be  obeyed  ? 

Year  by  year  we  are  extending  our  network  of  laws  over 
human  conduct;  more  and  more  pertinent  becomes  the  ques- 

*  R.  C.  Brooks,  Corruption  in  American  Politics  and  Life,  p.  99. 
'  For  a  disciission  of  this  point,  see  F.  Paulsen,  System  of  Ethics,  bk.  iil| 
chap.  IX,  sec.  9.  International  Journal  of  EtHcs,  vol.  18,  p.  18. 


LIBERTY   AND   LAW  411 

tion,  Will  the  people  obey  them?  and  the  further  question. 
Are  there  times  when  the  law  may  be  rightly  disobeyed? 
We  shall  discuss  the  second  question  first. 

It  is  obvious  that  our  whole  social  structure  rests  upon  the 
willingness  of  the  people  to  obey  the  law.  The  watchword 
of  republics  should  be,  not  "liberty,"  but  ''obedience"; 
their  gravest  danger  now  is  not  tyranny,  but  anarchy.  We 
must  individually  submit  with  patience  and  good  temper 
to  the  decisions  of  the  majority,  even  if  we  disapprove  those 
decisions.  We  must  abide  by  the  rules  of  the  game  until  we 
can  get  the  rules  changed.  And  all  changes  must  be  effected 
according  to  the  rules  agreed  upon  for  effecting  changes. 
This  law-abiding  spirit  is  the  great  triumph  of  democracy; 
only  so  long  as  it  exists  can  popular  government  stand. 
Though  it  be  slower  and  exacting  of  greater  effort  and  skill, 
evolution,  not  revolution,  is  the  method  of  permanent 
progress. 

We  must,  then,  band  together  against  any  groups  that, 
in  their  impatience  of  reform  or  opposition  to  the  common 
will,  cast  aside  the  restraints  of  law  —  whether  they  are  suf- 
fragettes, or  working-men,  or  capitalists  intent  on  breaking  a 
strike,  or  "one-hundred  per  cent  Americans"  out  to  repress 
"Bolshevism."  It  is  doubtful  whether,  in  the  long  run,  any 
of  these  groups  further  their  particular  cause  by  violence; 
but  if  they  do,  they  further  it  at  the  expense  of  something 
still  more  precious,  the  preservation  of  the  law-abiding  spirit. 
Other  organizations  will  not  be  slow  to  profit  by  the  lesson  of 
their  success;  and  we  shall  have  Heaven  knows  how  many 
causes  seeking  to  attain  their  ends  by  destructiveness  and  re- 
sistance. Especially,  the  very  serious  and  menacing  rebeUion 
of  labor  against  law  must  be  firmly  controlled;  much  as  we 
may  sympathize  with  their  grievances,  we  cannot  counte- 
nance the  attempt  to  remedy  them  by  violence.  The  Indus- 
trial Workers  of  the  World,  with  their  frank  espousal  of  "di- 


412  PUBUC  MORALITY 

rect  action,"^  have  made  themselves  enemies  of  society.  "Sa- 
botage/' intimidation  and  coercion  by  strikers  or  capitalists, 
the  spirit  of  Bolshevism  (using  that  term  to  mean  the  advo- 
cacy of  revolutionary  methods)  must  be  branded  as  criminal. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  spread  of  the  spirit  of  lawlessness 
among  the  lower  classes  should  serve  to  warn  the  upper 
classes  that  present  social  conditions  will  not  much  longer 
be  endured.^  There  is  a  great  deal  of  idealism  among  the 
advocates  of  violence;^  there  is  a  great  deal  of  sympathy  on 
the  part  of  the  public  with  lawless  strikers,  with  the  I.W.W. 
gangs  that  have  recently  invaded  city  churches,  with  all 
those  under-dogs  who  are  now  determining  to  have  a  share 
in  the  good  things  of  life.  Unless  the  employing  and  govern- 
ing classes  meet  their  demands  halfway,  gunpowder  and 
dynamite  pretty  surely  lie  ahead. 

Will  the  spirit  of  lawlessness  spread?  Ought  we  to  slacken 
our  process  of  lawmaking  lest  we  make  the  yoke  too  hard 
to  bear?  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  through  more  laws,  better 
laws,  and  a  better  mechanism  for  punishing  infraction  of 
laws,  that  we  can  hope  to  check  lawlessness.  Lynchings  — 
as  we  noted  in  chapter  xxv  —  have  been  the  product  of 
inadequate  legislation  and  judicial  procedure;  as  our  laws 

1  Cf.,  in  a  pamphlet  issued  by  them:  "The  I.W.W.  will  get  the  results 
sought  with  the  least  expenditure  of  time  and  energy.  The  tactics  used  are 
determined  solely  by  the  power  of  the  organization  to  make  good  in  their 
use.  The  question  of  'right'  and  'wrong'  does  not  concern  us.  In  short, 
the  I.W.W.  advocates  the  use  of  militant  'direct  action'  tactics  to  the  full 
extent  of  our  power  to  make  them."  (Quoted  in  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  109, 
p.  703.) 

2  Cf .  Ettor  (quoted  in  Outlook,  vol.  101,  p.  340) :  "They  tell  us  to  get  what 
we  want  by  the  ballot.  They  want  us  to  play  the  game  according  to  the 
established  rules.  But  the  rules  were  made  by  the  capitalists.  They  have 
laid  down  the  laws  of  the  game.  They  hold  the  pick  of  the  cards.  We  never 
can  win  by  political  methods.  The  right  of  suffrage  is  the  greatest  hoax 
of  history.   Direct  action  is  the  only  way." 

^  Cf.,  for  example,  Giovannitti's  poem.  The  Cage,  in  the  Atlantic 
MotUhly,  June,  1913. 


LIBERTY  AND  LAW  41S 

against  the  worst  crimes  become  sharper,  our  police  forces 
more  efficient,  and  our  court  trials  quicker  and  less  hampered 
by  technicalities,  they  decrease  in  number.  More  drastic 
legislation  against  liquor  has  made  violations  of  liquor  laws 
fewer.  The  kind  of  lawlessness  that  is  on  the  increase  is  that 
which  exists  as  a  protest  against  and  a  means  of  remedying 
evils  that  the  laws  have  not  yet  properly  dealt  wuth;  or,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  lawless  efforts  of  the  upper  classes  to 
repress  the  growing  spirit  of  unrest  and  agitation.  Give  us 
by  law  an  industrial  code  that  will  minimize  the  exploita- 
tion of  the  weak  by  the  strong,  bringing  a  good  measure  of 
security  and  comfort  to  all,  and  such  outrages  as  those  of 
the  McNamara  brothers  will  cease,  or  at  worst  will  be  merely 
sporadic  and  generally  condemned.  Allow  present  condi- 
tions to  drift  on  without  sharp  legal  guidance,  and  such  out' 
rages  will  certainly  become  more  and  more  numerous.  The 
alternative  that  confronts  the  modern  w^orld  is  plainly  evo- 
lution by  law  or  revolution  by  violence. 

Individualism :  J.  S.  Mill,  On  Liberty.  H.  Spencer,  Principles  of 
Ethics,  pt.  IV,  chaps,  xxv-xxix;  Social  Statics;  and  many  other 
writings.  J.  H.  Levy,  The  Outcome  of  Individualism.  Various  pub- 
lications of  the  British  Personal  Rights  Association.  W.  Donis- 
thorpe,  Individualism.  W.  Fite,  Individualism,  lect.  iv. 

Legal  control:  Florence  Kelley,  Some  Ethical  Gains  through 
Legislation.  Jane  Addams,  Newer  Ideals  of  Peace.  E.  A.  Ross, 
Socicd  Control,  chap.  xxxi.  D.  S.  Ritchie,  Principles  of  State 
Interference.  J.  W.  Jenl^s,  Government  Action  for  Social  Welfare, 
A.  V.  Dicey,  Law  and  Opinion.  J.  Seth,  Study  of  Ethical  Principles, 
pp.  297-331.  H.  C.  Potter,  Relation  of  the  Individual  to  the  Industrial 
Situation,  chap.  vr.  W.  J.  Brown,  Underlying  Principles  of  Modern 
Legislation.  Journal  of  Philosophy^  Psychology,  and  Scientific 
Methods,  vol.  10,  p.  113.  A.  T.  Hadley,  Freedom  and  Responsibility. 
J.  W.  Garner,  Introduction  to  Political  Science,  chaps,  ix,  x.  Edmond 
Kelly,  Evolution  and  Effort. 

Lawlessness:  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  109,  p.  441;  vol.  Ill,  p.  17. 
J.  G.  Brooks,  American  Syndicalism,  the  I.W.W.  P.  F.  Brissen- 
den,  Tlie  Launching  of  tlie  I.W.W. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

EQUALITY  AND  PRIVILEGE 

All  men,  our  Declaration  of  Independence  tells  us,  are 
created  free  and  equal  —  that  is,  with  a  right  to  freedom  and 
equality.  They  are  not  actually  equal  in  natural  gifts,  but 
they  ought,  so  far  as  possible,  to  be  made  equal  in  oppor- 
tunity; equality  is  not  a  fact,  but  an  ideal.  And  as  an  ideal 
it  comes  sometimes  into  conflict  with  its  twin  ideal  of  liberty; 
the  freedom  of  the  stronger  must  be  curtailed  when  it  robs 
the  weaker  of  their  fair  share  of  happiness;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  a  dead  level  of  equality  must  not  be  sought  at  the 
sacrifice  of  the  potentialities  for  the  general  good  that  lie  in 
the  free  play  of  individuality.  The  various  projects  for 
securing  a  greater  equality  among  men  must  be  scrutinized 
with  an  eye  to  their  total  effects  upon  human  happiness. 

What  flagrant  forms  of  inequality  exist  in  our  society? 

Equality  is  a  modern  ideal;  in  former  times  it  was  gener- 
ally assumed  that  men  inevitably  belong  to  classes  or  castes; 
that  some  must  have  luxury  and  others  poverty,  some  must 
rule  and  others  obey.  Plato,  in  constructing  his  ideal  state, 
retains  the  walls  between  the  small  governing  class,  the 
warriors,  and  the  mass  of  artisans,  who  are  of  no  particular 
account  but  to  get  the  work  done.  Castiglione,  in  his  Booh 
of  the  Courtier,  declares  that  "there  are  many  men  who, 
although  they  are  rational  creatures,  have  only  such  share 
of  reason  as  to  recognize  it,  but  not  to  possess  or  profit  by  it. 
These,  therefore,  are  naturally  slaves,  and  it  is  better  and 
more  profitable  for  them  to  obey  than  to  command." 

But  the  invention  of  the  printing-press  brought  ideas  to 


EQUALITY  AND  PRIVILEGE  41fi 

the  masses,  the  invention  of  gunpowder  brought  them 
power;  the  colonization  of  new  continents  leveled  old  dis- 
tinctions of  rank;  the  development  of  manufacture  and  com- 
merce brought  fortune  and  power  to  men  of  humble  origin. 
The  forces  thus  set  in  motion  have  resulted  in  our  day  in  the 
general  acceptance  of  political  democracy  —  witness  in 
contemporary  affairs  the  inception  of  the  Portuguese  Repub- 
lic, the  Chinese  Repubhc,  the  abolition  of  the  veto-power  of 
the  British  House  of  Lords  —  and  are  creating  a  widespread 
belief  in  industrial  democracy.  So  complete  is  our  American 
acquiescence  in  the  principle  of  equality  —  in  the  abstract 
—  that  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  realize  the  burning  passions 
that  underlay  such  familiar  words  as  Don  Quixote's,  **  Know, 
Sancho,  that  one  man  is  no  more  than  another  unless  he  does 
more  than  another";  or  Burns's  "A  man's  a  man  for  a' 
that";  or  Tennyson's  '*  'T  is  only  noble  to  be  good." 

Yet,  for  all  our  abstract  belief  in  equality,  we  have  not 
become  equal  in  opportunity,  and  in  some  ways  are  actually 
becoming  less  so.  Land,  for  example,  which  was  once  to  be 
had  for  the  taking,  is  steadily  rising  in  price,  and  is  now,  in 
most  parts  of  the  country,  getting  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
poor.  Foreign  observers  agree  that  there  is  no  other  existing 
nation  so  plutocratic  as  our  own;  and  wealth  here  is  prob- 
ably —  though  the  matter  is  in  doubt  —  becoming  more  and 
more  concentrated.^  It  is  estimated  that  one  per  cent  of  the 
inhabitants  of  our  country  now  own  more  property  than  the 
remaining  ninety-nine  per  cent.  The  natural  resources  of 
the  country  have  been  to  a  considerable  extent  seized  by  a 

1  For  a  recent  and  cautious  discussion  of  this  point  see  F.  W.  Taussig, 
Principles  of  Economics,  chap.  54,  sec.  3.  There  is  really  no  accurate  infor- 
mation available  to  settle  the  question  whether  wealth  is  becoming  more  or 
less  concentrated.  Certainly  the  number  of  the  rich  has  rapidly  increased, 
and  very  many  of  the  poor  have  risen  into  the  class  of  the  well-to-do.  Wages 
and  the  scale  of  living  of  the  poor  have  risen,  but  not  in  proportion  to  the 
total  increase  in  wealth.  The  rich  seem  to  be  not  only  getting  richer,  but 
getting  a  larger  share  of  the  national  wealth. 


416  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

few  shrewd  capitalists,  such  natural  monopolies  as  railways, 
telegraph  and  telephone  service,  gas  and  electric  lighting,  are 
controlled  by,  and  largely  in  the  interests  of,  a  small  owning 
class.  The  Astors  have  become  enormously  rich  because  one 
of  their  progenitors  bought  for  an  inconsiderable  sum  farm 
land  on  Manhattan  Island  which  is  now  worth  so  many 
dollars  a  square  foot.  Others  have  made  gigantic  fortunes 
out  of  the  country's  forests,  its  coal  deposits,  its  copper,  its 
water-power,  its  oil.  A  certain  upper  stratum  of  society  is 
freed  from  the  necessity  of  work,  can  exercise  vast  power 
over  the  lives  of  the  poor,  and  use  its  great  accumulations  for 
personal  luxury  or  at  its  caprice,  in  defiance  of  the  general 
welfare.  Such  congestion  of  wealth  involves  poverty  on  the 
part  of  masses  of  the  less  fortunate.  With  no  capital,  the 
poor  man  cannot  compete  in  the  industrial  game;  he  has  no 
money  to  invest,  no  reserve  to  fall  back  upon;  he  must  accept 
employers'  terms  or  starve.  He  cannot  pause  to  educate 
himself,  to  get  the  skill  and  knowledge  that  might  enable 
him  to  work  up  the  ladder.  His  power  in  politics  is  over- 
shadowed by  that  of  the  great  corporations  with  their  funds 
and  their  control  of  legal  skill.  He  cannot  afford  expert 
medical  care,  or  proper  hygienic  conditions  of  life;  he  is 
lucky  if  he  can  get  a  measure  of  justice  in  the  courts.  To 
call  such  a  situation  one  of  equality  is  irony.  It  is  certain 
that,  far  as  we  are  yet  from  final  solution  of  the  problems  of 
production,  we  are  still  farther  from  a  solution  of  the  prob- 
lems of  the  distribution  of  wealth.  "A  new  and  fair  division 
of  the  goods  and  rights  of  this  world  should  be,"  De  Tocque- 
ville  long  ago  declared,  "the  main  object  of  all  who  conduct 
human  affairs." 

What  methods  of  equalizing  opportunity  are  possible  ? 

Three  plans  for  a  fairer  distribution  of  wealth  have  been 
proposed.  According  to  one,  the  profits  from  industry  would 


EQUALITY  AND   PRIVILEGE  417 

be  divided  among  the  population  on  a  basis  of  their  needs. 
This  is,  however,  clearly  impracticable;  every  one  would 
discover  unlimited  needs,  and  no  one  would  be  fit  to  make 
the  apportionment.  The  second  scheme  is  that  all  men 
should  be  paid  alike  for  equal  hours  of  work,  or,  rather,  in 
proportion  to  the  disagreeableness  of  the  work,  the  amount 
of  sacrifice  made.  This  scheme  is  that  usually  advocated  by 
Socialists.  The  objection  to  it  is  that  equal  pay  for  every 
man  would  take  away  the  chief  stimulus  to  initiative,  skill, 
energy,  efficiency;  it  would  take  the  zest  and  excitement  out 
of  the  game  of  life,  make  living  too  monotonous;  there  must 
be  rewards  for  the  ambitious  youth,  prizes  to  be  won.  The 
third  plan  proportions  reward  to  efficiency.  And  on  the 
whole,  as  men  are  constituted,  it  seems  desirable  to  reward 
men  financially  according  to  their  efficiency,  so  far  as  that 
can  be  measured.^  This  does  not  mean  to  leave  things  as 
they  are.  For  at  present  the  shrewd,  if  also  fortunate,  are 
rewarded  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  efficiency ;  and  many 
who  are  not  efficient  at  all,  who  even  do  no  work  at  all  that  is 
socially  useful,  are  among  the  wealthiest. 

Moreover,  efficiency  itself  is  only  partly  due  to  the  indi- 
vidual's will  and  effort;  it  is  due  to  the  physique  and  gifts 
and  fortune  he  has  inherited,  the  education  and  environ- 
ment that  have  moulded  him,  the  social  situation  in  which 
he  finds  himself,  the  wilHngness  of  others  to  cooperate  with 
him,  and  his  good  luck  in  early  ventures.  It  seems  unfair 
that  to  him  that  hath  so  much,  so  much  more  should  be 
given.  Or  at  least  it  seems  fair  that  he  that  hath  less  should 
be  given  more  favorable  opportunity.  It  is  not  enough,  as 
Professor  Giddings  says,  to  reward  every  man  according  to 
his  performance;  we  must  find  a  way  to  enable  every  man  to 
achieve  his  potential  performance.  The  plan  of  proportion- 
ing rewards  to  efficiency  must  be  modified  by  mercy  for  the 
*  F.  W.  Taussig,  Principles  of  Economics,  chap.  64,  sec.  3. 


418  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

weak-minded  and  weak-bodied.  It  must  be  supplemented 
by  earnest  efforts  to  provide  health,  education,  and  favorable 
environment  for  all,  and,  by  the  limitation  of  the  right  of 
inheritance,  that  all  may  have,  so  far  as  possible,  approxi- 
mately equal  opportunity.  It  must  beware  of  judging  ef- 
ficiency by  immediate  and  obvious  results,  must  encourage 
inventions  that  ripen  slowly,  genius  that  stumbles  and  blun- 
ders before  succeeding,  work  that  contributes  to  others' 
results  and  makes  no  showing  for  itself.  It  must  involve  a 
restriction  of  the  right  to  unearned  incomes. 

To  put  these  necessary  corollaries  to  the  eflSciency-reward 
plan  into  concrete  form :  — 

(1)  The  handicap  of  ignorance  must  be  removed  by  pro- 
viding free  education  for  all,  to  the  point  of  enabling  every 
one  to  develop  efficiency  in  some  vocation.  Scholarships  for 
the  needy,  the  prohibition  of  child  labor,  and  a  high  enough 
wage-scale  for  adults  to  permit  the  youth  of  all  classes  to 
complete  their  education,  are  indispensable. 

(2)  The  handicap  of  ill-health  must  be,  so  far  as  possible, 
removed  by  state  support  of  mothers  —  so  that  children 
need  not  inherit  a  weakened  constitution  from  overtired 
mothers,  or  suffer  from  want  of  care  in  infancy;  by  free 
medical  aid  to  all;  by  strict  legislation  for  sanitary  housing, 
pure  food,  etc.;  by  the  provision  of  public  parks  and  play- 
grounds. 

(3)  The  possibility  of  exorbitant  profits  from  industry 
(profits  out  of  proportion  to  the  actual  contribution  of  the 
individual  in  skillful  work,  mental  or  manual)  must  be 
abolished,  by  one  of  the  plans  discussed  in  chapter  xxvii. 

(4)  There  must  be  abohtion  or  sharp  limitation  of  un- 
earned incomes  —  i.e.,  incomes  for  which  a  return  to  society 
in  service  has  not  been  made  by  the  getter.  This  is  the  step 
that  is  clearest  of  all  theoretically,  but  the  worst  sticking 
point  in  practice.  If  we  could  persuade  men  that  they  should 


EQUALITY  AND  PRIVILEGE  419 

not  reap  where  they  have  not  sown,  the  gravest  inequities 
of  our  present  order  would  disappear. 

The  sources  of  unearned  incomes  are,  first,  the  ''unearned 
increment"  in  land  values;  secondly,  the  "unearned  incre- 
ment" in  the  value  of  natural  resources;  thirdly,  all  interest 
on  investment;  fourthly,  all  wealth  inherited  or  obtained  by 
legacy  or  gift. 

(a)  Land  in  the  heart  of  New  York  or  London  sells  at 
fifteen  million  dollars  or  so  an  acre.  The  land  value  of 
Manhattan  Island  alone,  the  central  part  of  New  York  City, 
is  in  the  neighborhood  of  $3,500,000,000,  and  rapidly  in- 
creasing. A  few  generations  ago  it  was  all  bought  from  the 
Indians  for  $24.  It  is  estimated  that  the  "unearned  incre- 
ment" of  land  values  in  Berlin  during  fiifty  years  has  been 
between  $500,000,000  and  $750,000,000.  What  is  true  so 
strikingly  in  the  case  of  these  great  cities  is  true,  in  lesser 
degree,  of  all  cities  and  to'^Tis  and  villages  that  have  grown 
in  population.  The  total  increase  in  land  values  in  America 
since  the  days  of  the  pioneers  equals,  of  course,  the  present 
value  of  its  land,  since  it  was  acquired  by  our  forefathers 
without  payment,  or  with  only  a  nominal  fee  to  the  Indians. 
Almost  all  of  this  enormous  increase  in  wealth  has  gone  into 
the  pockets  of  the  fortunate  individuals  who  got  possession; 
very  little  into  the  public  treasury.  Our  cities  have  remained 
terribly  poor,  always  in  debt,  obliged  to  pass  by  many  needed 
improvements  and  to  impose  heavy  taxes  on  their  citizens. 
Yet  all  this  wealth  (not  counting  improvements  made  by  the 
possessor  upon  his  land)  has  been  socially  created.  Others 
have  moved  into  the  neighborhood,  factories  have  been 
built  near  by,  roads  and  railways  and  sewers  and  water- 
systems  and  lighting-systems  and  police  protection,  and  a 
hundred  other  things,  have  made  the  individual's  land  more 
and  more  salable.  If  our  fathers  had  been  wise  enough  to 
divert  a  large  percentage  of  this  increase  in  value  into  the 


420  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

public  coffers,  no  one  would  have  been  wronged,  but  many 
private  fortunes  would  to-day  be  smaller,  and  the  entire 
population  could  have  been  free  from  taxation  from  the 
beginning,  with  plenty  of  money  for  all  needed  public  works 
including  many  that  we  can  now  only  dream  about. 

It  is  easy  to  see  what  could  have  been  done;  to  determine 
what  should  now  be  done  is  far  more  difficult.  To  try  to 
regain  for  the  public  the  unearned  increments  of  past  years 
would  be  an  injustice  to  those  who  have  purchased  lands 
recently,  at  the  increased  prices,  and  even,  perhaps,  to  those 
who  have  benefited  by  the  increasing  values,  since  they  have 
regarded  the  increase  as  theirs  and  adjusted  their  expendi- 
tures to  this  added  income.  The  best  that  could  be  done 
would  be  to  take  an  inventory  of  all  land  values  now,  and 
provide  for  a  recurrent  reappraisal;  then  to  take  all,  or  a 
large  percentage,  of  the  increased  value  from  now  on.  It 
would,  indeed,  be  dangerous  to  attempt  to  take  it  all,  on 
account  of  the  extreme  difficulty  of  drawing  the  line  between 
earned  and  unearned  increments;  even  the  most  painstaking 
and  impartial  decisions  would  be  sometimes  unjust.  But  to 
take  half  or  two  thirds  of  what  should  be  deemed  "  unearned  " 
would  be  practicable.  Several  modern  States  now  take  from 
ten  to  fifty  per  cent;  and  the  percentage  taken  will  doubtless 
increase.  The  objections  to  such  a  course  are  twofold.  In 
the  first  place,  it  is  pointed  out  that  if  the  unearned  incre- 
ment of  value  is  appropriated  by  the  State,  the  State  should 
recoup  landowners  for  all  undeserved  decrements  of  value; 
it  is  not  fair  to  take  away  the  possibility  of  gain  and  leave 
the  possibility  of  loss.  So  long,  however,  as  our  population 
grows,  the  State  could  afford  to  make  good  the  compara- 
tively few  cases  of  decreased  value  and  yet  get  a  big  income. 
The  other  objection  is  that  the  hope  of  winning  the  increased 
land  values  has  been  a  great  and  needed  incentive  to  the 
development  of  the  country,  and  a  legitimate  compensation 


EQUALITY  AND  PRmLEGE  421 

for  the  hardships  of  pioneering.  But  while  this  is  true  of  the 
earUer  days,  it  applies  less  and  less  to  present  conditions, 
and  is  hardly  at  all  applicable  to  the  profits  made  in  city 
lands.  On  the  whole,  there  seems  little  objection  to  the  ap- 
propriation by  the  State  henceforth  of  the  unearned  incre- 
ments of  land  value.  But  the  days  of  enormous  increments 
are  passing,  and  land  will  presently  reach  a  comparatively 
stable  value.  So  that  this  method  of  preventing  inflated 
fortunes  must  be  counted,  on  the  whole  —  except  for 
new  and  rapidly  growing  communities  —  a  lost  oppor- 
tunity.^ 

(b)  What  is  true  of  land  is  true  of  the  natural  resources 
of  the  country  —  coal,  minerals,  oil,  gas,  water-power, 
forests.  These  were  seized,  with  a  small  payment  or  none, 
by  the  early  comers,  and  sold  later  at  a  great  advance,  or 
worked  for  an  increasing  profit  by  the  owner.  Here,  again, 
if  the  nation  had  maintained  an  inventory  of  these  values 
and  appropriated  to  itself  all  or  a  percentage  of  the  increase 
in  value  (which  results  from  the  increasing  public  need  of 
the  resources  and  the  limited  supply,  together  with  the 
increase  in  facilities  for  transportation,  etc.,  rather  than 
from  the  owner's  labor  or  skill),  many  of  our  present  gross 
inequalities  in  wealth  would  have  been  forestalled,  and  the 
community  would  be  far  richer  in  its  common  wealth.  Add 
to  the  realization  of  this  fact  the  sight  of  the  reckless  waste 
by  private  owners  of  such  resources  as  can  be  wasted,  and 
the  present  conservation  movement  is  fully  explained.  The 
best  that  can  now  be  done  is  to  retain  under  government 
ownership  such  natural  resources  as  have  not  yet  passed 

*  H.  J.  Davenport,  State  and  Local  Taxation,  pp.  294-303.  F.  C.  Howe, 
European  Ciiiea  at  Work,  pp.  189-207.  Quarterly  Journal  of  Economics, 
vol.  2^,  p.  83;  vol.  25,  p.  682;  vol.  27,  p.  539.  Political  Science  Qvarterhj, 
vol.  27,  p.  586.  National  Municipal  Review,  vol.  3,  p.  354.  F.  W.  Taussig^ 
Principles  of  Economics,  chap.  44,  sec.  5. 


422  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

into  private  hands,  and  to  appropriate  further  increases  in 
value  of  those  that  are  privately  owned.  ^ 

(c)  Practically  all  of  the  upper  classes  add  to  the  incomes 
they  earn  by  labor  of  hands  or  brain  an  "unearned"  income 
derived  from  investment;  i.e.,  from  the  wilhngness  of  others 
to  pay  for  the  use  of  their  accumulated  wealth  or  lands.  A 
considerable  class  is  thus  enabled,  if  it  chooses,  to  live 
without  working.  A  great  proportion  of  this  wealth  that 
draws  interest  was  never  itself  earned  by  the  possessors,  in 
the  stricter  sense  of  the  word  "earned";  it  has  come  to  them 
by  inheritance,  by  the  increase  of  value  of  land  or  natural 
resources,  or  squeezed  out  of  labor  and  the  public  by  the 
unregulated  profits  of  some  autocratically  managed  industry 
or  franchise.  Is  it  expedient  to  allow  this  accumulated 
wealth  to  bring  an  income  to  its  possessors?  There  are  two 
possibilities:  one  goes  with  government  control  of  private 
industry,  the  other  with  industrial  socialism. 

According  to  the  first  plan,  income  might  still  be  derived 
from  money  in  savings  banks,  from  stocks  and  bonds,  and 
from  the  rent  of  land  and  buildings.  But  it  would  cease  to 
be  a  serious  source  of  inequality.  For  if  the  unearned  incre- 
ment of  land  values  and  natural  resources  were  deflected  to 
the  State,  if  none  but  moderate  profits  were  allowed  from 
industry;  and  if,  in  addition,  the  right  of  inheritance  and 
gift  were  sharply  curtailed,  there  would  be,  after  a  gener- 
ation, no  large  fortunes  left  or  thereafter  possible.  A  man 
might  receive  by  legacy  a  moderate  amount  of  money,  a 
little  land  or  property;  by  working  efficiently  and  living 
simply  he  might  add  continually  to  his  investments  and  so 
come  to  have  an  income  measurably  beyond  his  earnings. 
But  he  could  not  get  wealth  enough  for  investment  to  be 
freed  in  perpetuity  from  the  necessity  of  earning  his  living; 

*  C.  R.  Van  Hise,  Concentration  and  Control,  pp.  154-66.  Outlook,  vol 
85,  p.  426;  vol.  86,  p.  716;  vol.  93,  p.  770;  vol.  95,  p.  21. 


EQUALITY  AND  PRIVILEGE  42S 

and  Inequalities  of  wealth  could  not  become  very  great;  no 
greater,  perhaps,  than  would  be  consistent  with  the  greatest 
happiness. 

According  to  the  socialistic  plan,  since  all  industry  would 
be  run  by  the  State,  on  state-provided  capital,  there  would 
be  no  demand  for  a  man's  savings  except  for  purely  personal 
uses,  no  stocks  and  no  bonds,  no  savings  banks,  except  for 
the  safe  deposit  of  money  and  valuables.  All  interest  might 
then  be  forbidden;  and  a  man  would  save  merely  for  future 
use,  or  to  pass  on  to  others,  not  for  the  sake  of  drawing  a 
further  income  from  his  savings.  All  rent  must  then  in  fair- 
ness be  forbidden  also,  except  such  payments  as  would  be  a 
fair  return  for  improvements  made,  buildings  constructed, 
with  the  cost  of  repairs,  insurance,  etc.  This  would  result  in 
all  land  being  owned  by  the  users,  and  do  away  with  land- 
lordism. The  unearned  increment  would  be  so  widely  dis- 
tributed that  it  would  be  needless,  for  purposes  of  equalizing 
distribution,  to  bother  with  it,  though  it  might  still  be  appro- 
priated by  the  State  as  a  means  of  increasing  its  revenue. 
This  scheme  would  make  it  impossible  for  any  one  to  live 
without  earning  his  livelihood,  except  during  such  periods 
as  his  accumulated  earnings  would  tide  him  over.  It  would, 
indeed,  lessen  the  incentive  to  saving;  but  if  it  were  but- 
tressed by  the  provision  of  fair  salaries  for  all  and  by  univer- 
sal insurance  against  illness,  accident,  old  age,  and  death, 
there  would  no  longer  be  much  need  of  saving.  This  social 
order  would  be  eminently  just,  leaving  only  such  inequali- 
ties in  wealth  as  would  result  from  the  differences  in  pro« 
ductive  efficiency  of  different  men,  coupled  with  a  moderate 
right  of  inheritance.  Its  practicability,  however,  hinges 
upon  the  general  practicability  of  socialism,  which  must 
remain  for  the  present  an  open  question.^  At  any  rate,  such 

*  F.  W.  Taussig,  Principles  of  Economics,  chap.  46;  chap.  66,  sec.  5; 
ehap.  64,  sec.  2. 


«24  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

a  radical  change  as  this  lies  beyond  the  range  of  immediate 
possibilities. 

(d)  The  right  of  inheritance  and  gift,  which  we  have  had 
to  mention  as  aggravating  other  sources  of  inequality, 
needs,  as  matters  are  at  present,  drastic  curtailment.  The 
tax  must  not,  indeed,  be  heavy  enough  to  encourage  spend- 
thrift living  and  lessen  thrift,  or  to  cut  too  deeply  into  the 
capital  necessary  for  carrying  on  business.  But  a  carefully 
devised  tax  can  escape  these  dangers;  and  it  is  plainly  not 
best  for  society,  or  for  the  heirs  themselves  in  most  cases, 
that  they  should  have  irresponsible  use  of  large  sums  of 
money  which  they  have  not  earned  —  in  a  world  where 
miUions  are  starving,  physically,  mentally,  and  spiritually, 
for  lack  of  what  money  can  provide.  If,  however,  the  plan 
last  outlined  is  ever  carried  into  effect,  there  will  be  no  need 
of  restricting  the  right  of  inheritance;  even  the  alternative 
plan  would  require  little  attention  to  inheritance  after 
present  inequalities  had  been  approximately  leveled,  as 
there  would  then  be  little  opportunity  for  large  accumu- 
lations. A  sharply  graded  inheritance  tax  may  therefore 
be  looked  upon  as  a  now  necessary  but  temporary  expe- 
dient.^ 

We  may  conclude  with  the  consideration  of  four  special 
problems  that  are  related,  in  some  aspect,  to  the  conceptions 
of  equaUty  and  privilege. 

What  are  the  ethics  of: 

/.  The  single  tax  f  The  single-tax  idea  is  that  all  the  public 
revenue  should  be  raised  by  a  land  tax.  The  push  behind 
the  movement  comes  from  the  sight  of  the  unearned  fortunes 
that  have  been  made  out  of  land.  The  term  is  used  loosely 
by  some  to  mean  merely  the  taking  or  taxing  by  the  State, 

*  F.  W.  Taussig,  Princi,ples  of  Economics,  chap.  54,  sec.  5;  chap.  67, 
eecs.  5,  6. 


EQUALITY  AND   PRIVILEGE  425 

as  we  have  already  suggested,  of  all  future  unearned  incre- 
ments of  land  value,  so  far  as  they  can  be  computed.  But 
this  would  not  now  provide  enough  revenue  for  most  com- 
munities, and  so  would  not  really  make  possible  a  single  tax. 
The  real  single  tax  would  involve  taking  in  taxation  not 
only  future  increases  in  values,  but  all  the  rental  value  of 
land.  Even  this  would  not  always  produce  revenue  enough, 
as  the  needs  of  public  revenue  bear  no  relation  to  the  land 
values  in  a  given  area.  But  it  would  in  most  places  produce 
considerably  more  than  enough  revenue.  Land  taxes  in 
New  York  City,  for  example,  if  trebled,  would  supply  all 
the  revenue;  they  would  have  to  be  quintupled  to  absorb 
the  entire  rental  value  of  the  land  the  city  stands  on.  The 
simplicity  of  the  scheme  appeals  to  many  —  especially  to 
those  who  own  no  land.  But  it  amounts  to  a  confiscation  of 
land  values  by  the  State,  which  would  be  unjust  to  land- 
owners, however  advantageous  to  the  rest  of  the  community. 
It  means  charging  everybody  rent  for  the  land  he  now  owns. 
Present  tenants  would  be  no  worse  off,  but  present  owners 
of  the  land  they  use,  as  well  as  landlords,  would  be  hard  hit. 
Let  us  consider  each  in  turn. 

A  considerable  proportion  of  the  land  is  owned  by  the 
users,  the  majority  of  whom  are  members  of  the  middle 
class  and  but  moderately  well-to-do.  Upon  them  the  burden 
of  supporting  our  increasing  public  undertakings  would 
largely  fall.  But  why?  They  are  not  getting  any  unearned 
income.  They  have,  in  most  cases,  paid  pretty  nearly  full 
value  for  their  land,  even  though  that  land  was  originally 
acquired  for  little  or  nothing.  They  have  put  their  earnings 
into  land  in  good  faith,  when  they  might  have  put  it  into 
industry  or  enjoyed  its  use.  The  single  tax  would  work 
grave  injustice  to  them.  It  would  also  be  practically  inex- 
pedient, in  drawing  the  public  revenue  largely  from  a  class 
that  can  less  afford  it,  while  leaving  hardly  touched  most  of 


426  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

the  bigger  fortunes,  which  consist  seldom  chiefly  of  land* 
holdings. 

But  even  as  to  that  part  of  the  land  that  is  bringing  un- 
earned income  to  landlords  —  is  it  fair  to  stop  that  income 
unless  we  stop  all  other  forms  of  income  on  investment?  One 
man  has  put  his  fortune  into  stocks  or  bonds;  he  draws  his 
five  per  cent  in  security  with  no  further  trouble  than  clipping 
coupons;  another,  having  put  an  equal  fortune  into  land, 
finds  his  five  per  cent  income  entirely  confiscated.  Not  by 
such  class  legislation  can  justice  be  served  or  equality  pro- 
duced. The  landlord  class  deserves  no  worse  than  the  stock- 
holder class  or  the  investor  in  a  savings  bank.  It  is  fair,  as 
we  suggested  above,  to  put  an  end  to  all  incomes  from  invest- 
ment, and  make  every  man  live  on  his  earnings;  it  is  not 
fair  to  pick  out  landlords  for  exploitation. 

II.  Free  trade  and  protection  ?  Free  trade  is  undoubtedly 
the  ultimate  industrial  ideal;  not  as  a  natural  right,  but  as  a 
matter  of  mutual  advantage,  that  everything  may  be  manu- 
factured in  the  most  economical  place  and  way.  The 
geographical  division  of  labor  is  as  generally  advantageous 
as  the  assignment  of  highly  specialized  tasks  within  a  com- 
munity. Import  duties  result  in  diverting  labor  into  less 
economical  channels,  and  hence  entail  a  loss  to  the  commun- 
ity as  a  whole.  The  prosperity  of  the  United  States  has  been 
in  considerable  measure  the  result  of  its  complete  internal 
free  trade.  On  this  general  truth  the  best  economists  are 
pretty  universally  agreed.  The  argument  that  a  tariff  wall 
is  necessary  to  maintain  our  generally  higher  standard  of 
wages  and  living  is  pure  fallacy,  as,  indeed,  can  be  seen  in 
the  fact  that  wages  in  free-trade  England  are  higher  than 
in  protectionist  Germany.  The  only  legitimate  economic 
question  is  whether  special  advantages  may  accrue  from 
protecting  certain  industries  under  certain  peculiar  condi- 
tions. For  example,  a  new  industry,  in  the  conduct  of  which 


EQUALITY  AND  PRIVILEGE  427 

skill  has  not  yet  been  acquired,  may  need  nursing  while  it  is 
growing  strong  enough  to  produce  as  cheaply  as  foreign 
competitors.  Again,  when  foreign  nations  impose  a  tax 
upon  our  products,  it  may  be  politically  expedient  to  impose 
a  counter-tariff,  as  a  means  toward  reciprocity  and  eventual 
free  trade.  But  the  discussion  of  such  situations  involves 
no  ethical  principles,  and  may  be  left  to  the  economists  and 
statesmen. 

The  considerations  that  concern  the  moralist  are  rather 
such  as  these :  Is  it  advisable  to  keep  our  own  people  self- 
sufficing,  producing  all  they  need  to  consume?  Is  it  permis- 
sible to  protect  (by  a  subsidy,  which  is  equivalent  to  an 
import  duty  in  other  matters)  our  foreign  merchant  marine, 
so  as  to  have  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  our  flag  flying  in 
foreign  ports  and  the  assurance  of  plenty  of  transports, 
colliers,  etc.,  in  case  of  war?  Or  is  it  better  for  humanity 
that  the  nations  should  become  mutually  interdependent, 
requiring  one  another's  products  and  somewhat  at  one 
another's  mercy  in  case  of  war?  There  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  narrower,  "patriotic"  view  retards  the  deepest  interests 
of  humanity,  and  that  free  trade  is  to  be  sought  not  only 
as  a  means  toward  economic  prosperity,  but  as  an  avenue 
toward  universal  peace. 

The  other  dominant  ethical  aspect  of  the  situation  lies  in 
the  fact  that  the  tariff  plays  into  the  hands  of  certain 
monopoUes,  enables  them  to  maintain  high  prices  and  mak( 
excessive  profits,  which  international  competition  would  re- 
duce.  As  actually  used,  the  American  tariff  is  largely  an 
instrument  for  favoring  special  classes  of  manufacturers  at 
the  general  expense,  and  so  is  to  be  condemned. 

On  the  other  hand,  where  manufacturers  are  enabled  by 
the  tariff  merely  to  make  fair  profits,  and  economic  consid- 
erations would  dictate  a  removal  of  the  duty  and  the  shifting 
of  labor  to  industries  where  it  could  be  more  advantageously 


fl28  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

employed,  legitimate  regard  for  vested  interests  should 
make  us  pause.  To  ruin  an  industry  in  which  capitalists 
have  invested  their  fortunes  and  laborers  have  acquired 
skill,  although  it  would  be  in  the  end  for  the  general  good, 
would  work  unjust  hardship  to  them;  in  such  cases,  then,  a 
tariff  should  be  lowered  only  with  great  caution,  or  some 
compensation  should  be  made  to  the  individuals  who  suffer 
loss  thereby. 

HI.  The  control  of  immigration  ?  Another  contemporary 
question  is  whether  discrimination  may  rightfully  be  exer- 
cised in  the  admission  of  ahens  to  residence  in  our  country. 
Abstract  considerations  would  suggest  the  desirability  of 
equal  treatment  to  all  comers.  But  certain  practical  effects 
must  be  considered. 

(1)  The  admission  of  hordes  of  ill-educated  and  ill- 
disciplined  immigrants  from  countries  lower  in  the  scale  ol 
progress  than  our  own  is  a  serious  menace  to  the  ideals  and 
standards  of  living  that  we  have  at  great  cost  evolved.  Our 
own  morals  and  manners  are  not  firmly  enough  fixed  to  be 
sure  of  withstanding  the  downward  pull  of  more  primitive 
conceptions  and  habits.  Their  willingness  to  work  for  small 
wages  lowers  the  remuneration  of  Americans ;  their  content- 
ment with  wretched  living  conditions  blocks  our  attempts 
to  raise  the  general  standard  of  life.  Many  of  them  are  un- 
appreciative  of  American  ideals,  easily  misled  by  corrupt 
politicians,  and  thus  a  deadweight  against  political  and  social 
advance.  We  may,  perhaps,  disregard  the  poverty  of  the 
immigrant,  if  he  is  in  good  health  and  able  to  work;  we  may 
even  disregard  his  lack  of  education,  if  he  is  mentally  sound 
and  reasonably  intelligent.  But  some  practicable  method  is 
needed  to  hold  in  check  the  incoming  stream  of  those  who  are 
low  in  their  standards  of  living,  that  we  may  be  spared  the 
social  indigestion  from  which  we  have  suffered  in  the  past. 
One  feasible  suggestion  is  to  limit  the  number  of  immigrants 


EQUALITY  AND  PRIVILEGE  429 

annually  admitted  from  each  country  to  a  certain  small 
percentage  of  the  number  of  natives  of  that  country  already 
resident  here.  In  that  way  the  total  number  could  be 
restricted  without  offense  to  any  nation,  and  those  peoples 
most  easily  assimilated  would  be  admitted  in  greatest  pro- 
portions. In  addition,  naturalization  should  be  permitted 
only  after  a  number  of  years,  during  which  the  immigrant 
would  be  in  danger  of  deportation  for  proved  criminality, 
vicious  indulgence,  intemperance,  shiftlessness,  troublesome 
agitation,  and  other  undesirable  traits. 

(2)  The  admission  of  peoples  of  very  alien  race  to  resi- 
dence side  by  side  with  our  own  inevitably  gives  rise  to 
friction  and  unpleasantness.  However  irrational  it  may  be, 
there  are  instinctive  antipathies  and  distrusts  between  the 
different  racial  stocks.  The  importation  of  the  negroes 
brought  us  a  terrible  racial  problem,  one  for  which  there 
seems  no  satisfactory  solution,  ^\^lite  men  as  a  class  dislike 
living  side  by  side  with  them,  and  fiercely  resent  intermar- 
riage, which  might  ultimately  merge  the  races,  as  it  seems 
to  be  doing  in  South  America.  A  general  feeling  of  brother- 
hood and  social  democracy  is  greatly  retarded  by  this  racial 
chasm.  ^  It  is  earnestly  to  be  hoped  that  Chinese,  Japanese, 
Hindus,  and  other  non-European  races  may  not  be  admitted 
to  residence  here  in  any  great  degree;  similar  antipathies 
and  resentments  would  be  added  to  our  existing  discords. 
It  is  not  that  these  races  are  inferior  to  our  own,  they  are 
simply  different;  and  however  superficial  the  differences, 
they  are  just  the  sort  of  differences  that  cause  social  friction. 
Precisely  the  same  argument  would  apply  to  the  exodus  of 
Americans  and  Europeans  to  Asiatic  countries.  A  certain 
amount  of  intermingling  of  students,  travelers,  missionaries, 
traders,  is  highly  beneficial,  in  the  exchange  of  ideas  and 
manners  it  stimulates;  but  it  will  probably  always  be  best 
I  Cf.  J.  M.  Mecklin,  Democraqf  and  Race  Friction. 


430  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

that  the  main  racial  stocks  should  remain  apart,  on  their 
several  continents,  in  that  mutual  respect  and  brotherhood 
that  the  superficial  repugnances  of  too  close  contact  tend  to 
destroy.  The  plan  suggested  at  the  close  of  the  preceding 
paragraph  would  sufficiently  avert  these  undesirable  racial 
migrations. 

IV.  The  woman-movement  ?  The  demand  of  women  for  a 
larger  Ufe  and  a  recognition  from  men  of  their  full  equality 
has  found  expression  in  recent  years,  not  only  in  the  hys- 
terical acts  of  the  British  suffragettes,  but  in  many  soberer 
revolts  against  the  traditional  assignment  of  duties  and 
privileges.  We  may  agree  at  once  in  deploring  the  exclusion 
of  women  from  any  rights  and  opportunities  which  are  not 
inconsistent  with  a  wise  division  of  labor,  and  that  patroniz- 
ing air  of  superiority  shown  toward  them  by  so  many  men  — 
a  condescension  not  incompatible  with  tenderness  and 
chivalry.  Theirs  has  been  the  repressed  and  petted  sex.  Yet 
there  are  no  adequate  grounds  for  supposing  that  men  are, 
on  an  average,  really  abler  or  saner  or  more  reasonable  natu- 
rally than  women;  that  they  are,  indeed,  in  any  essential 
sense  different,  except  for  the  results  of  their  different 
education  and  life,  and  such  divergences  as  the  differentia- 
tion of  sex  itself  involves  —  including  an  average  greater 
physical  strength. ^  Men  and  women  are  naturally  equals; 
with  equally  good  training  they  can  contribute  almost 
equally  to  the  world's  work;  they  have  an  equal  right  to  edu' 
cation,  a  useful  vocation,  and  the  free  pursuit  of  happiness. 

But  equal  rights  do  not  necessarily  imply  identical  duties; 
there  is  a  certain  division  of  labor  laid  down  by  nature. 
Women  alone  can  bear  children,  mothers  alone  can  properly 
rear  them;  no  incubators  and  institutions  can  supply  this 
fundamental  need.  If  women,  in  their  eagerness  to  compete 
with  men  in  other  occupations,  neglect  in  any  great  numbers 
^  But  cf.  MUnsterberg,  Psychology  and  Social  Sanity,  p.  195  Jf. 


EQUALITY  AND  PRI\^LEGE  431 

this  most  difficult  and  honorable  of  all  vocations,  there  will 
be  a  dangerous  decline  in  the  numbers  and  the  nurture  of 
coming  generations.  ^loreover,  if  homes  are  not  to  be  sup- 
planted by  boarding-houses  and  hotels,  the  great  majority 
of  women  must  stay  at  home  and  do  the  work  which  makes 
a  home  possible.  Home-making  and  child-rearing  are  the 
duties  that  always  have  been  and  always  vnll  be  the  lot  of 
most  women;  and  they  are  duties  too  exacting  to  permit  of 
being  conjoined  with  any  other  vocation. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  woman  who  has  servants  and 
rears  no  children  should  be  pushed  by  public  opinion 
into  some  outside  occupation;  women  have  no  more  right 
to  idle  than  men.  All  unmarried  women,  when  past  the 
years  that  may  properly  be  devoted  to  education,  should 
certainly  enter  upon  some  useful  vocation;  and  there  is  no 
reason  why  (with  a  few  obvious  exceptions)  any  occupa- 
tion save  the  more  physically  arduous  should  be  closed 
to  such.  Every  girl  should  be  prepared  for  some  remu- 
nerative work,  in  case  she  does  not  marry  or  her  husband 
dies  leaving  her  childless.  Such  economic  independence 
would,  further,  have  the  inestimable  value  that  she  would 
be  under  no  pressure  to  marry  in  order  to  be  supported  and 
have  an  honorable  place  in  the  world;  if  she  is  trained  to  earn 
her  living  she  will  be  free  to  marry  only  for  love.  If  she  does 
marry,  and  gives  up  her  prior  vocation  to  be  housekeeper 
and  child-rearer,  she  should  be  legally  entitled  to  half  her 
husband's  earnings.  The  grave  difficulty  is  that  a  woman 
needs  to  prepare  herself  both  for  her  probable  duties  as 
housekeeper  and  mother,  and  also  for  her  possible  need  of 
earning  a  living  otherwise.  Education  in  the  former  duties, 
that  must  fall  to  the  great  majority  of  women,  cannot  safely 
be  neglected,  as  it  is  so  largely  to-day;  the  only  general 
solution  will  be  for  unmarried  women  to  adopt,  as  a  class, 
the  vocations  for  which  less  careful  preparation  is  necessary. 


432  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

The  question  of  the  ballot  has  never  been  politically  ot 
great  importance.  It  has  been  rather  a  matter  of  justice,  of 
self-respect  for  women  and  proper  respect  for  women  on 
the  part  of  men.  So  far  as  running  the  machinery  of  govern- 
ment goes,  the  decision  in  political  affairs  might  well  be 
left  to  half  the  population  —  when  that  half  cuts  so  com- 
pletely through  all  classes  and  sections  —  if  the  saving  in 
expense  or  trouble  seemed  to  make  it  expedient.  The  inter- 
ests of  women  are  identical  with  those  of  men.  Women 
were,  in  most  parts  of  this  country,  as  well  off  before  the  law 
as  men;  they  did  not  need  the  ballot  to  remedy  any  unjust 
discriminations.  Moreover,  the  ballot  will  mean  the  neces- 
sity of  sharing  the  burden  of  political  responsibility.  The 
women  who  look  upon  the  right  to  vote  as  a  plum  to  be 
grasped  for,  a  something  which  they  want  because  men  have 
it,  with  no  conception  of  the  training  necessary  to  exercise 
that  right  responsibly,  are  not  fit  to  be  trusted  with  it  — 
no  fitter  than  most  men.  It  often  seems  that  it  were  better 
to  restrict  our  trustful  and  generous  right  of  suffrage  to  those 
'w^ho  can  show  evidence  of  intelligence  and  responsibility  — 
whether  men  or  women. 

However,  there  is  considerable  reason  to  suppose  that 
women,  through  their  greater  interest  in  certain  goods,  will 
materially  accelerate  some  reforms  —  as,  the  sanitation  of 
cities,  the  improvement  of  education,  child-welfare  legisla- 
tion, the  warfare  against  commercialized  prostitution.  The 
actual  results  already  attained  by  women's  votes  are,  on 
the  whole,  important  enough  to  justify  the  extension  of 
the  right,  as  a  matter  of  social  expediency.  Moreover,  the 
very  increase  in  the  number  of  voters  makes  the  securing  of 
power  through  bribery  more  difficult;  and  the  entrance  of 
women  into  politics  will  probably  hasten  their  purification 
in  many  places.  At  any  rate,  the  necessity  of  voting  is 
tending  to  develop  a  larger  interest  among  women  in  public 


EQUALITY  AND  PRIVILEGE  433 

affairs,  fitting  them  better  for  the  education  of  their  children, 
and  doing  away  with  the  lingering  sense  of  the  inferiority  of 
women. 

General:  F.  W.  Taussig,  Principles  of  Economics,  chap.  54.  W.  E. 
Weyl,  The  New  Democracy^  bk.  i.  Adams  and  Sumner,  Labor 
Problems,  chap.  xiii.  C.  B.  Spahr,  The  Present  Distribution  of 
Wealth  in  the  United  States.  Dewey  and  Tufts,  Ethics,  chap,  xxv, 
sees.  6,  7.  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  112,  pp.  480,  679. 

The  single  tax:  Henry  George,  Progress  and  Poverty;  Social 
Problems.  R.  C.  Fillebrown,  The  A.B.C.  of  Taxation.  Outlook,  vol. 
94,  p.  311.  Shearman,  Natural  Taxation.  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol. 
112,  p.  737;  vol.  113,  pp.  27,  54!5.  H.  R.  Seager,  Introduction  to 
Economics,  chap,  xxvi,  sees.  283-88.  F.  W.  Taussig,  op.  cit.,  chap. 
42,  sec.  7.  Arena,  vol.  34,  p.  500;  vol.  35,  p.  366.  New  World, 
vol.  7,  p.  87. 

Free  trade:  North  American  Review,  vol.  189,  p.  194.  Quarterly 
Review,  vol.  202,  p.  250.  H.  Fawcett,  Free  Trade  and  Protection.  W.  J. 
Ashley,  The  Tariff  Problem.  H.  R.  Seager,  op.  cit.,  chap,  xx,  sees. 
211-17.  F.  W.  Taussig,  op.  cit.,  chaps.  36,  37. 

Immigration :  Jenks  and  Lauck,  The  Immigration  Problem.  H.  P. 
Fairchild.  Immigration.  Adams  and  Sumner,  Labor  Problems,  chap. 
III.  F.  J.  Warne,  The  Immigrant  Invasion.  A.  Shaw,  Political 
Problems,  pp.  62-86.  North  American  Review,  vol.  199,  p.  866. 
Nineteenth  Century,  vol.  57,  p.  294.  Educational  Review,  vol.  29, 
p.  245.  Forum,  vol.  42,  p.  552.  Charities,  vol.  12,  p.  129^.  Quar- 
terly Journal  of  Economics,  vol.  16,  pp.  1,  141. 

The  woman  question:  J.  S.  Mill,  The  Subjection  of  Women. 
C.  P.  Gilman,  Women  and  Economics.  O.  Sclireiner,  Woman  and 
Labor.  K.  Schirmacher,  The  Modem  Woman's  Rights  Movement. 
Jane  Addams,  Newer  Ideals  of  Peace,  chap.  vii.  F.  Kelley,  Some 
Ethical  Gains  through  Legislation,  chap.  v.  Outlook,  vol.  82,  p.  167; 
vol.  91,  pp.  780,  784,  836;  vol.  95,  p.  117;  vol.  101,  pp.  754,  767. 
Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  112,  pp.  48, 191,  721.  Century,  vol.  87,  pp.  1, 
663.  Natumal  Municipal  Review,  vol.  1,  p.  620.  H.  M.  Swanwick, 
The  Future  of  the  Women's  Movement.  Ellen  Key,  The  Woman 
Movement.  J.  Martin,  Feminism.  E.  S.  Martin,  The  Unrest  of 
Women.  B.  I.  Bell,  Right  and  Wrong  after  the  War,  chap.  iii.  /n- 
temational  Journal  of  Ethics,  vol.  19,  p.  443;  vol.  26,  pp.  207,  223, 
462. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE 

In  proportion  as  fair  means  are  found  and  utilized  for 
remedying  the  gross  inequalities  in  the  present  distribution 
of  wealth,  and  big  fortunes  disappear,  it  will  become  neces- 
sary for  the  State  to  undertake  more  and  more  generally  the 
functions  that  have,  during  the  last  few  generations,  been 
largely  dependent  upon  private  philanthropy.  This  will  be 
an  advantage  not  merely  in  putting  this  welfare  work  upon 
a  securer  basis,  but  in  enlisting  the  loyalty  of  the  masses  to 
the  Government.  Much  of  the  energy  and  devotion  which 
are  now  given  to  the  labor-unions,  because  in  them  alone 
the  workers  see  hope  of  help,  might  be  given  to  the  State 
if  it  should  take  upon  itself  more  adequately  to  minister 
to  the  people's  needs.  The  rich  can  get  health  and  beauty 
for  themselves;  but  the  poor  are  largely  dependent  upon 
public  provision  for  a  wholesome  and  cheerful  existence. 
Laissez-faire  individualism  has  provided  them  with  saloons; 
in  the  new  age  the  State  must  provide  them  with  something 
better  than  saloons.  "Flowers  and  sunshine  for  all,'*  in 
Richard  Jefferies'  wistful  phrase;  —  the  State  should  make 
a  determined  and  thoroughgoing  effort,  not  merely  to 
repress,  to  punish,  to  palliate  conditions,  but  in  every  posi- 
tive way  that  expert  thought  can  devise  and  the  people  will 
vote  to  support,  to  add  to  the  worth  of  human  life.  We  may 
consider  these  paternal  functions  of  government  under  three 
heads :  the  improvement  of  human  environment,  to  make  it 
more  beautiful  and  convenient;  the  development,  through 
educational  agencies,  of  the  mental  and   moral  life  of  the 


THE   FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  435 

people;  and  the  improvement,  by  various  means,  of  the 
human  stock  itself. 

In  what  ways  should  the  State  seek  to  better  human  environ- 
ment ? 

(1)  Municipal  governments  should  supervise  town  and 
village  planning.  The  riotous  individualism  of  our  American 
people  has  resulted  in  the  haphazard  growth  of  countless 
dreary  towns  and  an  architectural  anarchy  that  resembles 
nothing  more  than  an  orchestra  playing  with  every  instru- 
ment tuned  to  a  different  key.  The  stamp  of  public  control 
is  to  be  seen,  if  at  all,  in  an  inconvenient  and  monotonous 
chessboard  plan  for  streets.  Congestion  of  traffic  at  the  busy 
points;  wide  stretches  of  empty  pavement  on  streets  little 
used;  houses  of  every  style  and  no  style,  imbued  with  all  the 
colors  of  the  spectrum;  weed-grown  vacant  lots,  unkempt 
yards,  some  fenced,  some  unfenced;  poster-bedecked  bill- 
boards —  verily,  the  average  American  town  is  not  a  thing 
of  beauty.  Matthew  Arnold's  judgment  is  corroborated  by 
every  traveler.  "Evidently,"  he  wrote,  "  this  is  that  civiliza- 
tion's weak  side.  There  is  little  to  nourish  and  delight  the 
sense  of  beauty  there."  A  certain  crudeness  is  inevitable  in 
a  new  country,  and  will  be  outgrown;  age  is  a  great  artist. 
Man  usually  mars  with  his  first  strokes;  and  it  is  only  when 
he  has  met  his  practical  needs  that  he  will  dally  with  aesthetic 
considerations.  Many  of  our  older  cities  and  villages  have 
partly  outgrown  the  awkward  age,  become  dignified  in  the 
shade  of  spreading  trees,  and  fallen  somehow  into  a  kind  of 
unity;  a  few  of  them,  expecially  near  the  Atlantic  seaboard, 
where  the  stupid  rectangularity  of  the  towns  farther  west 
was  never  imposed,  are  among  the  loveliest  in  the  world. 
But  in  general,  in  spite  of  many  costly,  and  some  really 
beautiful,  buildings,  and  acknowledging  the  individual 
charm  of  many  of  the  wide-piazzaed  shingled  houses  of  the 


436  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

well-to-do,  and  the  general  effect  of  spaciousness,  our  towns 
and  villages  are  shockingly,  depressingly  ugly.  Money 
enough  has  been  spent  to  create  a  beautiful  effect;  the  failure 
lies  in  that  unrestrained  individualism  that  permits  each 
owner  to  build  any  sort  of  a  structure,  and  to  color  it  any 
hue,  that  appeals  to  his  fancy,  without  regard  to  its  effect 
upon  neighboring  buildings  or  upon  the  eyes  of  passers-by. 
All  sorts  of  architectural  atrocities  are  committed  —  curious 
false  fronts,  fancy  shingles,  scroll-work  balustrades,  and  the 
like;  —  in  the  town  where  these  words  are  written,  a  builder 
of  a  number  of  houses  has  satisfied  a  whim  to  give  eyebrows 
to  his  windows,  in  the  shape  of  flat  arches  of  alternate  red 
and  white  bricks,  with  an  extraordinarily  grotesque  and 
discomforting  effect.  But  even  where  the  buildings  are  good 
separately,  the  general  effect  is,  unless  by  coincidence,  a 
sad  chaos. 

In  the  more  progressive  countries  of  Europe  matters  are 
not  left  thus  to  the  caprice  of  individuals;  in  some  German 
towns,  and  the  so-called  garden  cities  of  England,  we  have 
excellent  examples  of  scientific  town  planning,  conducing 
to  homogeneity,  convenience,  and  beauty.  The  awakening 
social  sense  in  this  country  will  surely  lead  soon  to  a  general 
conviction  of  the  duty  of  an  oversight  of  street  planning  and 
building  in  the  interests  of  the  community  as  a  whole.  There 
is  no  reason  why  our  towns  should  not  be  sensibly  laid  out, 
according  to  a  prearranged  and  rational  plan;  they  might 
have  individuality,  picturesqueness,  charm;  be  full  of  inter- 
esting separate  notes,  yet  harmonious  in  design,  making  a 
single  composition,  like  a  great  mosaic.  Such  an  environ- 
ment would  have  its  subconscious  effects  upon  the  morals 
of  the  people,  would  awaken  a  new  sense  of  community 
byalty,  and  drive  home  the  lesson  of  the  necessity  and 
beauty  of  the  cooperative  spirit. 

Among  the  features  of  this  town  planning  are  these: 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  4m 

Streets  must  be  laid  out  in  conformity  with  the  topography 
of  the  neighborhood  and  the  direction  of  traffic.  Gentle 
curves,  or  frequent  circles,  as  in  Washington,  must  break 
the  monotony  of  straight  lines;  the  natural  features  of  the 
landscape,  hills,  bluffs,  a  river,  must  be  utilized  to  give 
character  to  the  town.  The  height  of  buildings  must  be 
regulated  in  relation  to  the  width  of  the  streets,  and  the 
percentage  of  ground  space  that  may  be  built  upon  deter- 
mined. All  designs  for  buildings  must  be  approved  by  the 
community  architects  with  consideration  of  their  harmony 
with  neighboring  buildings.  A  public  landscape  architect 
should  have  supervision  over  and  give  expert  advice  for  the 
planting  of  trees  and  shrubbery  and  the  beautifying  of 
yards  —  back  as  well  as  front.  Factories  and  shops  should 
be  confined  to  certain  designated  portions  of  a  town  (and 
the  smoke  nuisance  strictly  controlled);  disfiguring  bill- 
boards and  overhead  wires  done  away  with;  parks  laid  out 
and  kept  intact  from  intrusion  of  streets  or  buildings. 
Fortunately,  the  majority  of  our  American  houses,  built  of 
wood,  are  temporary  in  character;  and  most  city  buildings 
at  present  have  a  life  of  but  a  generation  or  two.  In  this 
evanescence  of  our  contemporary  architecture  lies  the  hope 
for  an  eventual  regeneration  of  American  towns.  In  the 
city  and  village  of  the  future,  life  will  be  so  bosomed  in 
beauty  that  there  will  be  less  need  of  artificial  beauty- 
seeking  and  gaslight  pleasures.  A  healthy  local  pride  will  be 
fostered  and  community  life  come  into  its  own  again. 

(2)  Municipalities  should  provide  facilities  for  wholesome 
recreation  out  of  doors.  Children,  in  particular,  ought  not 
to  be  obliged,  for  lack  of  other  space,  to  play  upon  city 
streets,  where  they  imj>ede  traffic  and  run  serious  risks.* 
School  yards  should  be  larger  than  they  generally  are,  and 

*  On  New  York  City  streets  two  hundred  and  thirty-one  children  were 
killed  in  twenty-one  months,  according  to  recent  figures. 


438  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

open  for  play  every  day  until  bedtime;  in  the  big  cities  the 
roofs  should  be  utilized  also.  Every  neighborhood  should 
have  its  ample  playgrounds.  For  want  of  such  provision 
children  of  the  poor  grow  up  pale  and  pinched,  without  the 
normalizing  and  educative  influence  of  healthy  play,  and 
with  no  proper  outlet  for  their  energies,  so  that  crime  and 
vice  flourish  prematurely.  With  proper  foresight  open 
spaces  can  be  retained  as  a  city  grows,  without  great  ex- 
pense; the  economic  gain,  in  a  reduced  death-rate,  reduced 
cost  for  doctors  and  nurses,  police,  courts,  and  prisons, 
and  increased  efficiency  of  the  next  generation  of  workers, 
will  easily  balance  the  outlay,  without  weighing  the  gain 
in  happiness  and  morality.^ 

But,  indeed,  adults  stand  also  in  need  of  outdoor  life. 
Grounds  for  ball  games,  bowls,  and  all  sorts  of  sports  should 
be  generously  provided  if  human  life  is  not  to  lose  one  of  its 
pleasantest  and  most  useful  aspects.  For  evenings  there 
should  be  attractive  social  meeting-places,  neighborhood 
clubs,  supervised  dance-halls,  and  the  like,  such  as  the  social 
settlements  now  to  a  slight  extent  provide,  with  notably 
beneficial  results.  As  the  poorer  classes  come  more  and  more 
into  their  inheritance  of  the  fruits  of  industry,  these  desid- 
erata may  perhaps  be  again  left  to  private  initiative;  but  at 
present  there  is  a  large  class  too  pressed  by  poverty  to  get 
for  itself  these  necessities  of  a  normal  life;  and  the  need  of 
the  people  makes  the  duty  of  the  State.^ 

(3)  The  States  and  the  Nation  must  be  careful  to  con- 
serve the  natural  resources  of  the  country  from  waste,  and 

^  See  on  this  point,  the  literature  of  the  Division  of  Recreation  of  the 
Russell  Sage  Foundation,  and  of  the  Playground  and  Recreation  Associa- 
tion of  America  (1  Madison  Avenue,  New  York  City).  Jane  Addams,  The 
Spirit  of  Youth  and  the  City  Streets.  C.  Zueblin,  American  Municipal 
Progress,  chap.  ix.  J.  Lee,  Constructive  and  Preventive  Philanthropy,  chaps, 
viii-xii.  Outlook,  vol.  87,  p.  775;  vol.  95,  p.  511;  vol.  96,  p.  443. 

*  Cf.  C.  R.  Henderson,  The  Social  Spirit  in  America,  chap.  xiv. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  439 

to  exploit  them  for  the  best  advantage  of  the  people.  The 
forests,  still  so  recklessly  felled,  must  be  guarded,  not  only 
for  the  sake  of  the  future  timber  supply,  but  to  prevent 
floods,  ensure  a  proper  supply  of  water  in  times  of  drought, 
and  preserve  the  soil  from  being  washed  away.  The  scientific 
practice  of  forestry,  the  maintenance  of  an  efficient  fire 
patrol,  and  the  reforestation  of  denuded  areas  that  can  best 
be  utilized  for  the  growth  of  timber,  must  be  undertaken  or 
supervised  by  government  experts.  The  very  limited  sup- 
plies of  coal,  oil,  and  natural  gas  must  be  protected  from 
waste.  Arid  lands  must  be  brought  into  use  where  irrigation 
is  possible,  swamp  lands  drained,  waterways  and  harbors 
improved  to  their  full  usefulness.^  National  and  state  high- 
ways must  be  built  as  object-lessons  to  the  towns  and 
counties  that  still  leave  their  roads  a  stretch  of  mud  or 
sand.  2 

All  of  these  material  improvements  have  their  civilizing 
influence,  their  moral  significance;  as  Edmond  Kelly  put  it, 
**By  constructing  our  environment  with  intelligence  we  can 
determine  the  direction  of  our  own  development."  So  it  is  of 
no  small  consequence  what  sort  of  homes  and  cities  we  five 
in.  During  the  next  generation  or  so,  while  the  State  is 
slowly  bestirring  itself  to  undertake  these  duties,  there  will 
be  great  need  of  civic  and  village  improvement  associations, 
women's  clubs,  merchants*  associations,  etc.,  to  arouse 
public  interest,  demonstrate  possibilities,  and  stir  up  muni- 

^  On  national  conservation,  see  C.  R.  Van  Hise,  The  Conservation  of 
Natural  Resources.  Outlook,  vol.  93,  p.  770.  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  101,  p. 
694.  Review  of  Reviews,  vol.  37,  p.  585.  Chautauquan,  vol.  55,  pp.  21,  33, 
112. 

2  It  is  estimated  that  ninety  per  cent  of  the  public  roads  in  the  United 
States  are  still  unimproved;  that  the  average  cost  of  hauling  produce  is 
twenty-five  cents  a  mile-ton,  as  against  twelve  cents  in  France;  that 
$300,000,000  a  year  would  be  saved  in  hauling  expenses  if  our  roads  were 
as  good  as  those  of  western  Europe. 


440  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

cipal  and  state  officials  to  action.  The  holidays,  Memorial 
Day,  Independence  Day,  Arbor  Day,  Thanksgiving  Day, 
etc.,  should  be  used  to  stimulate  civic  pride  in  these  matters; 
pulpit  and  press  should  be  brought  into  line.  It  will  be  a 
slow  and  discouraging,  but  necessary,  task  to  awaken  the 
people  to  a  realization  of  the  potentialities  for  a  better  civ- 
ilization that  lie  in  the  utilization  of  government  powers. 

What  should  be  done  in  the  way  of  public  education? 

The  principle  of  state  support  of  education  has,  happily, 
been  pretty  fully  accepted  in  this  country,  although  in  the 
East  the  universities  still  have  to  depend  upon  private  bene- 
factions. The  public-school  system  is  excellent  in  plant  and 
principle;  the  next  step  is  to  work  out  a  rational  curriculum. 
The  average  high-school  graduate  to-day  has  learned  little 
of  what  he  most  needs  to  know  —  how  to  earn  his  living, 
how  to  spend  his  money  wisely,  how  to  live.  The  average 
girl  knows  little  of  housekeeping,  less  of  the  duties  of 
motherhood.^  The  dangers  of  sex  indulgence  —  the  greatest 
of  all  perils  to  youth,  the  poisonous  effects  of  alcohol,  the 
necessities  of  bodily  hygiene,  are  seldom  effectively  taught. 
Moral  and  religious  education  is,  owing  to  our  sectarian- 
ism, almost  absolutely  neglected.  The  evils  of  political  cor- 
ruption and  unscrupulousness  in  business,  the  social  prob- 
lems that  so  insistently  beset  us,  are  little  discussed  in 
school.  Yet  here  is  an  enormous  opportunity  for  the  awaken- 
ing of  moral  idealism  and  the  social  spirit.  Boys  and  girls  in 
their  teens  can  be  brought  to  an  eager  interest  in  moral  and 

^  Cf.  H.  Spencer,  Education,  chap,  i:  "Is  it  not  an  astonishing  fact  that 
though  on  the  treatment  of  offspring  depend  their  lives  or  deaths,  and  their 
moral  value  or  ruin,  yet  not  one  word  of  instruction  on  the  treatment  of 
offspring  is  ever  given  to  those  who  will  hereafter  be  parents?  Is  it  not 
monstrous  that  the  fate  of  a  new  generation  should  be  left  to  the  chances 
of  unreasoning  custom,  impulse,  fancy  .  .  .  ?"  The  whole  chapter  is 
worth  reading;  the  neglect  of  which  Spencer  complained  still  persists. 


TIIE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  441 

social  problems;  class  after  class  could  be  sent  out  fired  witli 
enthusiasm  to  remedy  wrongs  and  push  for  a  higher  civili- 
zation. The  failure  to  awaken  more  of  this  dormant  good 
will  and  energy,  and  to  direct  it  for  the  elevation  of  com- 
munity standards  and  the  solution  of  community  problems, 
is  a  grave  indictment  against  our  complacent  "stand-pat'* 
educational  system.  Religious  instruction  will  be  a  delicate 
matter  for  the  indefinite  future;  but  inspirational  talks  on 
non-controversial  themes  should  find  place,  and  perhaps  a 
presentation  of  different  religious  views  in  rotation  by 
representatives  of  different  communions.  In  some  way,  at 
least,  recognition  should  be  made  of  the  important  role 
played  by  religion  in  life. 

Besides  the  school  system,  other  means  of  public  educa- 
tion must  be  extended.  The  libraries  and  art  museums  must 
reach  a  wider  public.  The  docent-work  in  the  museums  is  a 
recent  undertaking  of  considerable  importance.  Free  public 
lectures,  free  mothers'  schools,  city  kindergartens,  municipal 
concerts,  university  extension  courses  —  such  enterprises 
will  doubtless  become  universal.  The  work  of  the  National 
Government  in  spreading  knowledge  of  scientific  methods  of 
agriculture  and  of  practicable  methods  of  improving  country 
life  —  information  about  the  installation  of  plumbing  sys- 
tems, water  supply,  sewage  systems,  electr'^  lights,  etc.  — 
is  of  wide  educational  value. 

The  average  schooling  of  Americans  is  about  five  years 
apiece.  Such  inadequate  preparation  for  life  is  a  disgrace  to 
our  prosperous  age.  Education  should  be  universallj''  com- 
pulsory until  the  late  teens  at  least;  it  should  be  regarded  not 
as  a  luxury,  like  kid  gloves  and  caviare,  but  as  the  normal 
development  of  a  human  being  and  the  common  heritage. 
It  ought  not  to  be  the  exclusive  privilege  of  "gentlemen"  — ■ 
of  certain  select,  upper-class  individuals;  as  economic  con- 
ditions are  straightened  out,  universal  education  will  become 


442  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

practically  feasible.  It  is  not  only  as  a  matter  of  justice,  but 
in  the  interests  of  public  welfare,  that  education  should  be 
given  to  all.  It  will  actually  pay  in  dollars  and  cents,  in 
increased  efficiency,  more  intelligent  voting,  decreased 
crime,  decreased  commercial  prostitution,  and  crazy  prop- 
aganda of  all  sorts.  The  city  of  Boston  was  right  in  inscrib- 
ing on  its  public  library  the  motto:  "The  commonwealth 
requires  the  education  of  the  people  as  the  safeguard  of  order 
and  liberty." 

What  can  be  done  by  eugenics? 

Environment  and  education  are  of  enormous  importance 
in  determining  what  the  mature  individual  shall  be.  But 
the  result  is  strictly  limited  by  the  material  they  have  to 
work  upon;  the  individual  who  is  handicapped  by  heredity 
cannot  expect  to  catch  up  with  him  who  starts  the  race  of 
lite  better  equipped,  if  both  have  equally  favorable  influences 
and  opportunities.  These  influences  can  effect  little  perma- 
nent improvement  in  the  human  stock;  that  can  only  be 
radically  bettered  by  seeing  to  it  that  individuals  of  superior 
stock  have  children  and  those  of  inferior  stock  do  not.  We 
have  "harnessed  heredity*'  to  produce  better  types  of  wheat 
and  roses  and  cattle  and  horses  and  dogs;  why  not  produce 
better  types  of  men?  The  study  of  these  possibilities  con- 
stitutes the  new  science  of  eugenics,  which  its  founder, 
Francis  Galton,  defined  as  the  study  of  "those  agencies 
which  humanity  through  social  control  may  use  for  the 
improvement  or  the  impairment  of  the  racial  qualities  of 
future  generations.'*  Dr.  Kellogg  defines  it  as  "taking 
advantage  of  the  facts  of  heredity  to  make  the  human  race 
better."   "Good  breeding  of  the  human  species." 

We  may  first  ask  what  duties  the  disclosures  of  this  new 
science  lay  upon  the  individual. 

(1)  The  constitutional  health  of  children  is  partly  deter- 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  443 

mined  by  the  health  of  the  parents  at  the  time  of  conception 
and  birth.  Most  deaths  of  newborn  infants  are  due  to  prena- 
tal influences.  Overstrain,  malnutrition,  alcoholism,  and  all 
physical  excesses  tend  to  cause  physical  degeneracy  in  the 
offspring.  It  is  obviously  the  duty  of  prospective  parents  — 
and  that  means  practically  all  healthy  young  people  —  to 
keep  themselves  well  and  strong,  so  as  to  give  a  good  endow- 
ment of  health  to  their  children. 

(2)  Feeble-mindedness,  epilepsy,  some  forms  of  insanity, 
and  some  venereal  diseases  are  inheritable  defects;  those 
who  suffer  from  them  must  refrain  from  having  children. 
Studies  of  the  "Jukes"  family  and  the  **Kallikak"  family, 
and  others,  show  convincingly  the  spread  of  these  defects 
where  defectives  marry.  To  bring  children  into  the  world 
to  bear  such  burdens  —  and  to  cost  the  State,  as  they  are 
almost  sure  to,  for  their  support^  —  ought  to  be  regarded 
as  a  grave  sin. 

(3)  Little  positive  advice  can  yet  be  given  as  to  those  who 
are  best  fitted  to  have  children,  except  in  the  matter  of  health 
and  freedom  from  inheritable  defects.  According  to  Pro^ 
fessor  Boaz,^  one  racial  stock  is  about  as  good  as  another; 
so  whatever  selection  is  to  be  made  may  be  between  indi- 
vidual strains.  But  to  breed  the  human  stock  for  beauty, 
energy,  mental  ability,  immunity  to  disease,  sanity,  or  what 
not,  is  a  task  far  beyond  our  present  knowledge.  Personal 
value  and  reproductive  value  are  not  closely  correlative;  and 
the  factors  that  determine  a  good  inheritance  are  highly 
complex.  So  that  the  choice  of  wife  and  husband  may  be  left 
to  those  instinctive  affinities  and  preferences  which  will  in 
any  case  continue  to  be  the  deciding  causes. 

*  The  descendants  of  the  original  degenerate  couple  of  "Jukes"  cost 
New  York  State  in  seventy-five  years  $1,300,000.  See  R.  L.  Dugdale,  The 
Jukes.  H.  H.  Goddard,  The  Kallikak  Family. 

2  F.  Boaz,  The  Mind  of  Primitive  Man. 


444  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

(4)  One  other  duty,  however,  is  clear;  namely,  for  the 
strong  and  educated  and  well-to-do  to  beget  and  rear 
children;  the  tendency  to  "race-suicide'*  among  the  upper 
classes  is  a  matter  for  serious  alarm.  That  portion  of  the 
population  that  is  least  able  to  give  proper  nurture  to  chil- 
dren, and  to  train  them  up  to  American  ideals,  is  producing 
them  in  overwhelmingly  greatest  numbers.  The  older 
stocks  in  this  country  are  dying  out  and  being  replaced  by 
the  large  families  of  the  east  and  south  European  immi- 
grants. In  England  also,  we  are  told,  one  sixth  of  the  popu- 
lation, and  this  the  least  desirable  sixth,  is  producing  half  of 
the  coming  generation.  In  1790  the  American  family  aver- 
aged 5.8  persons;  in  1900  the  average  was  4.6.  Among  native 
Americans  the  average  is  lower  still.  College  graduates  are 
failing  to  reproduce  their  own  numbers.  Everywhere  the 
Western  peoples  are  breeding  more  and  more  slowly,  while 
the  Orientals,  negroes,  and,  in  general,  the  less  civilized  peo- 
ples, are  multiplying  rapidly.  Unless  the  upper  classes  in 
western  Europe  and  America  cease  their  selfish  refusal  to 
rear  citizens,  the  earth  will  be  inherited  by  the  more  back- 
ward peoples.  This  means,  plainly,  a  perpetual  clog  upon 
progress. 

We  may  now  ask  what  the  State  should  demand  in  the 
interests  of  race-improvement. 

(1)  Health  certificates  may  be  required  from  both  parties 
at  marriage;  i.e.,  marriage  may  be  prohibited  without  a 
guaranty  from  a  licensed  physician  of  freedom  from  com- 
municable or  inheritable  disease,  or  inheritable  defects. 
This  seems  the  minimum  of  protection  due  the  contracting 
parties  themselves,  as  well  as  due  the  next  generation. 

(2)  Marriage  restrictions  are  easily  evaded,  however; 
unscrupulous  physicians  can  usually  be  found  to  sign  certifi- 
cates. And  where  marriage  is  prohibited,  illegitimacy  is  sure 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  445 

to  flourish.  Hence  the  segregation  (with  proper  care)  of 
those  obviously  unfit  to  become  parents  seems  necessary. 
Great  as  would  be  the  initial  expense,  the  rapid  reduction 
in  the  number  of  idiots,  epileptics,  etc.,  would  in  a  generation 
or  two  coimterbalance  it  and  greatly  diminish  the  problem. 
It  is  estimated  that  there  are  some  three  hundred  thousand 
feeble-minded  persons  in  the  United  States,  only  twenty 
thousand  of  whom  are  segregated  in  institutions,  the  rest 
being  free  to  propagate  —  which  they  do  with  notorious 
rapidity.  Most  of  them  can  be  made  self-supporting;  and 
real  as  the  hardship  to  some  of  them  may  be  in  confining 
them  from  sex  relations,  the  sacrifice  seems  demanded  by 
the  welfare  of  coming  generations. 

(3)  An  alternative  to  segregation  (for  inheritable,  but  not 
for  communicable,  diseases)  is  sterilization.  The  operation 
when  performed  on  adults  seems  to  have  no  effects  upon 
character  or  the  enjoyment  of  life,  not  even  interfering  with 
ordinary  sex  gratification.  It  is  not  painful,  and  perfectly 
harmless,  to  man;  for  women  there  is  a  risk,  which  is  said, 
however,  to  be  slight.^  Sterilization  permits  the  unfit  to  be 
entirely  at  liberty,  to  marry,  if  they  can  find  mates,  and  to 
have  all  the  pleasures  of  life  except  that  of  parenthood.  A 
number  of  the  American  States  have  passed  laws  permitting 
the  compulsory  sterilization  of  certain  very  restricted  classes 
of  people  undesirable  as  parents,  at  the  discretion  of  the 
proper  authorities ;  and  this  seems,  on  the  whole,  at  least  in 
the  case  of  men,  the  best  solution. 

(4)  Of  an  entirely  different  nature  is  the  movement  to 
secure  state  support  for  mothers;  a  movement,  however, 
which  is  also  eugenic  in  its  intent.  At  present  those  parents 
who  are  zealous  to  maintain  a  high  standard  of  living,  those 
with  talents  which  they  are  ambitious  to  develop,  and  those 
who  realize  keenly  the  care  and  expense  that  children  need, 

1  CI  Dr.  E.  C.  Jones,  in  Woman's  Medical  Journal,  December.  1912. 


446  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

are  deterred  from  having  many,  or  any;  while  the  shiftless 
and  happy-go-iucky  propagate  without  scruple.  There  is, 
for  all  except  the  rich,  a  premium  on  childlessness,  which  the 
natural  desire  for  parenthood  cannot  wholly  discount.  But 
this  ought  not  to  be  so.  Child-bearing  and  rearing  is  a  very 
necessary  and  arduous  vocation,  in  which  all  the  best  women 
should  be  enlisted.  In  a  socialistic  regime  the  State  would  as 
a  matter  of  course  pay  for  this  work  as  well  as  for  all  other 
productive  work.  But  state  endowment  of  motherhood,  the 
payment  of  ''maternity  benefits,"  may  be  practised  apart 
from  industrial  socialism.  It  may  be  objected  that  the  re- 
moval of  economic  pressure  would  bring  an  undue  increase 
in  population  and  the  evils  that  Malthus  feared.  But  the 
tendency  of  advancing  civilization  seems  to  be  so  strikingly 
toward  a  declining  birth-rate  —  a  phenomenon  unrecognized 
in  this  country  because  of  the  tide  of  immigration,  but 
apparent  in  western  Europe  —  that  the  net  outcome  may 
be  attained  of  a  stationary  population.  Moreover,  the 
scheme  in  question  would  not  only  tend  to  increase  the 
number  of  children  born  to  the  prudent  among  the  middle 
classes,  it  would  enable  mothers  and  prospective  mothers 
to  save  themselves  from  that  overwork  which  enfeebles  so 
many  children  to-day;  it  would  insure  them  the  means  to 
care  properly  for  the  children.  State  inspectors  would  visit 
homes  and  examine  the  children  of  state-supported  mothers; 
the  amount  granted  might  vary  in  proportion  to  the  care 
apparently  given  to  the  children  —  their  cleanliness,  health, 
progress  in  education,  the  clothing,  food,  air,  and  space 
provided  for  them;  if  the  nurture  of  a  child  was  judged  too 
inadequate,  it  might,  after  warning,  be  removed  to  an  insti- 
tution and  the  parents  punished.^ 

^  See,  besides  the  books  referred  to  later,  H.  G.  Wells,  "The  Endowment 
of  Motherhood"  (in  Social  Forces  in  England  and  America);  or,  Nev)  Worlds 
for  Old,  chap.  iii.  F.  W.  Taussig,  Principles  of  Economics,  chap.  65,  sec.  1. 
Survey,  vols.  29  and  30,  many  articles. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  447 

In  some  such  ways  we  may  hope  to  check  the  recruiting 
of  coming  generations  from  the  diseased  and  feeble-minded, 
to  prevent  the  handicapping  of  poor  children  through  the 
overwork  and  poverty  of  their  parents,  and  gradually  to 
raise  the  level  of  inherited  human  nature.  When  coupled 
with  improved  environment  and  with  universal  and  rational 
education,  it  will  surely  mean  the  existence  of  a  happier  race 
of  men  —  which  should  be  the  ultimate  goal  of  all  human 
endeavor. 

What  are  the  gravest  moral  dangers  of  our  times  ? 

In  conclusion,  we  may  venture  a  judgment  as  to  which, 
out  of  the  many  evils  we  have  noted  in  contemporary  life, 
are  most  serious,  and  where  our  moral  energies  should  most 
earnestly  be  directed. 

The  most  prominent  of  prevalent  vices  are  certainly  sex 
incontinence  and  the  use  of  alcohol;  the  lure  of  wine  and  the 
lure  of  women  have  from  time  immemorial  been  man's 
undoing.  Alcohol  is  banished  in  our  country,  and  is  prob- 
ably doomed  to  general  prohibition,  together  with  opium 
and  morphine  and  the  other  narcotics.  The  sex  dangers 
are  not  to  be  so  easily  overcome,  and  we  are  probably  in  for 
an  increase  of  license  and  its  inevitable  evils.  There  will  be 
need  for  every  farsighted  and  earnest  man  and  woman  to 
stand  firm,  in  spite  of  enticing  promises  of  liberty,  for  the 
great  ideal  of  faithful  marriage  that  makes  in  the  end  for 
man's  deepest  happiness. 

The  most  prominent  sins  of  to-day  are,  selfish  money- 
making,  selfish  money-spending,  selfish  idleness;  the  chief 
sinners  we  may  label  pirates,  prodigals,  parasites.  By 
pirates  are  meant  the  dishonest  dealers,  the  grafters,  the 
vice  caterers,  the  unscrupulous  competitors,  the  pilers-up  of 
exorbitant  profits  at  the  expense  of  employees  and  public; 
by  prodigals,  the  spendthrift  rich,  the  wasters  of  wealth, 


448  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

those  whc  lavish  in  luxury  or  ostentation  money  that  is 
sorely  needed  by  others;  by  parasites,  the  idle  rich,  the  lazy 
poor,  the  tramps,  all  who  take,  but  do  not  give  a  return  o/ 
honest  work.  There  are  also  the  jingoes,  the  preachers  oi 
lawlessness,  the  demagogues,  and  many  less  common 
types  of  sinners.  But  the  particularly  flagrant  wrongs  of  our 
day  have  to  do  with  the  getting  and  spending  of  money;  and 
the  peril  of  the  near  future  which  looms  now  most  menac- 
ingly on  the  horizon  is  the  irritation  of  the  wronged  classes 
to  the  point  of  civil  warfare  and  revolution.  Such  a  calam- 
ity might,  of  course,  be  ultimately  a  means  of  great  social 
advance;  but  it  is  a  highly  dangerous  and  uncertain  method, 
involving  great  moral  damage  as  well  as  great  individual 
suffering,  and  to  be  averted  by  every  possible  means.  The 
hope  for  averting  it  lies  not  only  in  the  growth  of  public  con- 
demnation of  lawlessness,  but  in  the  substitution  of  an  ideal 
of  service  for  the  ideal  of  personal  gain,  and  in  the  growing 
willingness  of  the  community  to  check  by  progressive  legis- 
lative measures  the  various  means  which  resourceful  men 
have  discovered  for  advantaging  themselves  at  the  expense 
of  society.  Necessary  initial  steps  are  the  securing  of  inter- 
national peace  and  the  construction  of  an  efficient  political 
system.  When  these  ends  have  been  attained  and  a  just 
industrial  order  evolved,  the  citizens  of  the  future  will  take 
pride  in  using  the  powers  of  the  State  to  bring  the  greatest 
possible  health  and  happiness  to  all. 

Our  forefathers  had  great  wrongs  to  right  —  political 
tyranny  to  overthrow,  human  slavery  to  eradicate,  civil  and 
religious  liberty  to  win,  a  system  of  popular  education  to 
inaugurate,  and  with  it  all  the  wilderness  to  tame  and  a  new 
land  to  develop.  For  these  ends  they  sacrificed  much.  It  is 
for  us  to  attack  with  equal  courage  the  evils  of  the  present. 
Life  has  outwardly  become  easy  for  many  of  us;  our  spiritual 
muscle  easily  becomes  flabby.    But  there  are  new  tasks 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  RACE  449 

equally  importunate,  equally  worthy  of  our  loyalty  and 
sacrifice,  hard  enough  to  stir  our  blood.  The  times  call  for 
new  idealism,  new  courage,  new  effort;  the  purpose  of  this 
book  will  not  be  attained  unless  the  reader  carries  away  from 
its  perusal  some  new  realization  of  the  moral  dangers  that 
confront  our  civilization,  and  some  new  determination  to 
have  a  hand  in  meeting  them. 

Environment:  J.  Nolen,  Replanning  Small  Cities.  T.  C.  Horsfelt, 
The  Improvement  of  the  Dwellings  and  Surroundings  of  the  People. 
E.  Howard,  Garden  Cities  of  To-Morrow.  The  City  Beautiful 
(magazine).  Literature  of  the  National  League  of  Improvement 
Associations,  the  American  Civic  Association  (914  Union  Trust 
Building,  Washington,  D.C.),  the  City  Club  of  New  York,  Metro- 
politan Improvement  League  of  Boston,  etc.  The  Civic  Federation 
of  Chicago,  What  it  has  Accomplislied  (Hollister,  Chicago,  1899). 
Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  113,  p.  823.  World's  Work,  vol.  15,  p.  10022. 
Outlook,  vol.  92,  p.  373;  vol.  97,  p.  393;  vol.  103,  p.  203.  National 
Municipal  Review,  vol.  1,  p.  236. 

Education:  H.  Home,  Idealism  in  Education.  G.  Spiller,  Moral 
Education  in  Eighteen  Countries.  International  Journal  of  Ethics, 
vol.  20,  p.  454;  vol.  22,  pp.  146,  335.  I.  King,  Social  Aspects  of 
Education.  E.  Boutroux,  Education  and  Ethics.  Proceedings  of  the 
National  Education  Association,  Religious  Education  Association, 
laternational  Moral  Education  Congresses.  C.  R.  Henderson, 
The  Social  Spirit  in  America,  chap,  xn,  xiii.  S.  Nearing,  Social 
Adjustment,  chaps,  iii,  xv.  World's  Work,  vol.  15,  p.  10105. 
Outlook,  vol.  85,  pp.  634,  943;  vol.  89,  p.  789;  vol.  94,  p.  701. 

Eugenics:  C.  B.  Davenport,  Eugenics;  Heredity  in  Relation  to 
Eugenics.  W.  D.  McKira,  Heredity  and  Human  Progress.  E. 
Schuster,  Eugenics.  C.  W.  Saleeby,  Parenthood  and  Race  Culture. 
II.  G.  Wells,  Mankind  in  the  Making,  chap.  n.  New  Tracts  for  the 
Tin,£S  (various  authors,  Moffat,  Yard  Co.)  Reports  of  Interna- 
tional Eugenic  Congresses.  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  110,  p.  801. 
Forum,  vol.  51,  p.  542.  Quarterly  Journal  of  Economics,  vol.  26, 
pp.  1,  61.  J.  F.  Nisbet,  Marriage  and  Heredity.  Several  authors. 
Race  Improvement  in  the  United  States  {i\m.  Acad,  of  Political  aud 
Social  Science,  Philadelphia). 


INDEX 


Addams,  Jane,  quoted,  202,  237,  286, 
324,  408;  referred  to,  314. 

Adulteration,  251,  364. 

Alcohol,  causes  of  its  use,  194;  its 
value  to  man,  196;  evils  of  its  use, 
198;  the  attitude  of  the  individual 
towards,  203;  our  attitude  toward 
its  use  by  others,  205. 

Altruism,  definition  of,  124;  justifi- 
cation of  for  society,  124;  for  the 
individual,  125;  problems  con- 
cerning, 128;  obstacles  in  the  way 
of,  131;  reconciliation  with  egoism, 
134;  concrete  claims  of,  233. 

Anarchism,  401. 

Animals,  morality  of,  10,  16;  duties 
toward,  232. 

Arbitration,  320. 

Aristotle,  quoted,  168. 

Arnold,  Benedict,  case  of,  310. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  quoted,  3,  130, 
183,  259,  284,  293,  306,  435;  re- 
ferred to,  241,  265,  233. 

Art,  its  value,  259;  its  dangers  for 
morality,  267;  should  it  be  cen- 
sored, 271;  nude  in,  273. 

Asceticism,  104,  120. 

Athletics,  competitive,  are  they 
desirable?  188. 

Aurelius,  Marcus,  quoted,  97,  154, 
292;  referred  to,  301. 

Auto-suggestion,  280. 

Baby-saving,  347. 

Bible,  the,  161. 

Bradley,  quoted,  80,  152;  referred  to, 

95. 
Browning,  quoted,  117. 
Bryce,  James,  quoted,  325. 
Bureau  of  Municipal  Research,  329. 
Burns,  quoted,  112,  415. 
Business,  ethics  of,  363. 
Butler,  Bishop,  quoted,  154. 


Carlyle,  quoted,  84,  185,  187,  235. 
291;  his  theory  of  morality  ex- 
amined, 85. 

Carver,  T.  N.,  quoted,  154. 

Castiglione,  quoted,  414. 

Categorical  theory  of  morality,  148, 
163. 

Character,  definition  of,  96;  good- 
ness of,  96. 

Chastity,  reasons  for,  211;  necessary 
safeguards  of,  217. 

Chesterton,  G.  K.,  quoted,  256;  re- 
ferred to,  301. 

Children,  medical  inspection  of, 
346;  employment  of,  371;  play- 
grounds for,  437. 

Chivalry,  its  justification,  94. 

Christ,  quoted,  97,  119,  290. 

Christian  Science,  88,  277. 

Cicero,  quoted,  215. 

City  manager  plan,  340. 

Civil  service  laws,  331. 

Commission  government,  334. 

Compensation,  workmen's,  374. 

Competition,  evils  of,  380,  404;  a<i 
vantages  of,  407. 

Competitors,  duties  toward,  368. 

Conscience,  its  origin,  39;  definition 
of,  42;  value  of,  45;  the  individual- 
izing of,  50;  disagreements  of, 
63;  unsatisfactory  as  a  basis  for 
morality,  64;  perverted  forms  of, 
103;  awakening  of  social,  374. 

Conscientiousness,  its  value,  45; 
its  dangers,  57;  its  inadequacy, 
63;  evils  that  may  go  with,  103, 
107. 

Conservation  of  natural  resources, 
421,  438. 

Conservatism,  vs.  radicalism,  54; 
dangers  of,  103,  132. 

Consumers'  leagues,  386. 

Cooperation  in  business,  385. 


452 


INDEX 


Corruption  in  politics,  251,  323; 
forces  making  for  it,  324<;  its  evils, 
326;  legislative  checks  to,  330; 
under  socialism,  395. 

Courtesy  in  business,  365. 

Court-procedure,  delays  in,  358. 

Crime,  its  causes,  357;  its  convic- 
tion, 358;  its  treatment,  359. 

Cudworth,  quoted,  145. 

Culture,  definition  of,  259;  criticism 
of,  260;  value  of,  260;  most  impor- 
tant aspects  of,  262;  dangers  in, 
267. 

Custom-morality,  20;  its  tenacity, 
50;  forces  making  against,  52; 
dangers  of,  57. 

Dante,  quoted,  48,  119. 

Darwin,  quoted,  157;  referred  to, 
180. 

Delegated  government,  339. 

Devine,  E.  T.,  quoted,  133. 

Dewey  and  Tufts,  quoted,  96;  re- 
ferred to,  95. 

Dickinson,  G.  L.,  quoted,  111. 

Diplomacy,  untruthfulness  in,  251. 

Directors,  responsibility  of,  375. 

Divorce,  224. 

Dreyfus  case,  91. 

Duty,  meaning  of,  83;  conflict  with 
inclination,  83;  really  the  servant 
of  happiness,  85;  the  necessity  of 
allegiance  to,  288. 

Education,  important  aspects  of, 
262;  state  provision  of,  418,  440; 
religious,  440. 

Egoism  vs.  altruism,  134. 

Eliot,  George,  quoted,  94,  98,  124, 
263. 

Emerson,  quoted,  4,  48,  94,  182, 
230,  231,  235,  259,  265,  274. 

Employees,  duties  toward,  369;  in- 
juries incurred  by,  373. 

End,  does  it  justify  the  means?  88. 

Endsemonistic  theory,  88. 

Environment,  the  bettering  of,  435. 

Enictetus,  quoted,  97,  154. 

Epicureanism,  118. 

Equality,  ideal  of,  414;  methods  of 
attaining,  416. 


Eugenics,  226,  442. 
Expediency  vs.  morality,  153. 

Fanaticism,  103. 
Free  trade,  426. 
Friendship,  230. 

Gambling,  242. 

Gerould,  K.  F.,  quoted,  238,  246, 
248. 

God,  is  the  source  of  duty  his  will? 
160. 

Goethe,  quoted,  129,  130;  referred 
to,  160. 

Good  Government  Association,  329. 

Goodness,  intrinsic,  73;  extrinsic, 
77;  of  conduct,  80;  of  character, 
96. 

Goodwill,  Kant's  theory  of,  98;  in- 
adequacy of  that  theory,  100. 

Hadley,  A.  T.,  quoted,  377. 

Happiness,  the  end  of  morality,  80; 
does  morality  always  make  for? 
167;  its  attainability,  288,  297. 

Hay,  John,  quoted,  251. 

Health,  its  importance,  179;  possi- 
bility of  increasing,  182;  certifi- 
cates for  marriage,  444. 

Hours  of  work,  370. 

Housing  conditions,  352. 

Huxley,  T.  H.,  quoted,  156. 

Hypnotism,  its  moral  value,  278. 

Idleness,   is   it  ever  justified?   185; 

remedies  for,  351. 
Individualism,  403. 
Industrial  Workers  of  the  World,  89, 

90,  411. 
Inequality,  contemporary  forms  of, 

414;  remedies  for,  416. 
Inheritance,  right  of,  424. 
Immigration,  428. 
Interest  on  investment,  422. 
International  relations,  251, 307,  319, 

427. 
Intuitional  theory  of  morality,  its 

meaning,  61;  its  inadequacy,  63; 

its  plausibility,  (^Q. 
Investment,  ethics  of,  422,  426. 
Investors,  duties  to,  366. 


INDEX 


453 


James,  William,  quoted,  137,  158, 
2G9,  285,  318;  referred  to,  183, 
185. 

Jefferies,  Richard,  quoted,  434. 

Jesuits,  89,  90. 

Jesus.    See  Christ. 

Journalism,  ethics  of,  254. 

Justice,  its  justification,  91. 

Kant,  quoted,  99,  125;  his  theory 
of  the  Good  Will,  98;  its  inade- 
quacy, 100,  105;  his  solitariness, 
130;  his  categorical  imperative, 
148. 

Kelly,  Edmond,  quoted,  439. 

Kidd,  quoted,  17. 

Knowledge,  importance  of,  263. 

Laissez-faire,  403. 

La  Rochefoucauld,  quoted,  231,  284. 

Law.   See  Legislation. 

Lawlessness,  411. 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  quoted,  236,  252. 

Le  Gallienne,  quoted,  296. 

Legislation,  dangers  of  too  much, 
403;  necessity  of  much,  408;  hm- 
its  of,  410;  necessity  of  obedience 
to,  410. 

Liberty,  the  ideal  of,  399;  of  utter- 
ance, 400. 

Lord,  H.  G.,  quoted,  117;  referred 
to,  167. 

Luxury,  ethics  of,  236. 

Lynching,  359,  412. 

Maeterlinck,  quoted,  175,  291. 

Marriage,  factors  in  an  ideal,  221; 
best  age  for,  221;  trial,  225;  neces- 
sity of  uniform  laws  concerning, 
227;  duties  of,  229;  duty  of  some 
to  refrain  from,  443;  certificates, 
444. 

Maternity  benefits,  445. 

McNamara  brothers,  89,  90,  413. 

Mill,  J.  S.,  quoted,  125, 136, 143, 155, 
162,  244,  290,  400,  403,  405,  406; 
referred  to,  95. 

Monopoly  in  business,  368,  379;  evils 
of,  363;  advantages  of,  380. 

Morality,  definition  of,  30,  80,  164; 
its  basis,  73;  need  of,  112,  164;  is 


it  subjective  and  relative.'   144; 

does  it  always  make  for  happiness.? 

167;  is  there  anything  better  than? 

170. 
Moral  progress,  its  direction,  27;  its 

certainty,  21. 
Morals,    how    different    from    non- 
moral  customs,  25. 
Municipal  ownership  of  newspapers, 

258. 

Nature,  should  we  live  according  to? 

154,  163. 
Newman,  Cardinal,  quoted,  100. 
New  thought,  280. 
Nietzsche,  quoted,  171;  referred  to; 

156;  his  theory  of  the  superma* 

170-75. 

Optimism  and  pessimism,  75. 
Organization  of  impulses,  164. 
"Ought,"  the,  its  nature,  150. 

Pater,  Walter,  referred  to,  118,  268. 
Patriotism,  its  meaning,  306;  how  it 

should  be  directed,  307. 
Paulsen,  F.,  quoted,  96, 157;  referred 

to,  95. 
Peace,  methods  of  ensuring,  317. 
Pearson,  Karl,  quoted,  265. 
Perry,  R.  B.,  quoted,  317. 
Personal  morality,  origin  of,  9;  causes 

producing,  11;  its  problems,  111; 

definition  of,  10,  111;  need  of,  112; 

factors  complicating  its  problems, 

114. 
Plato,  quoted,  80,  94,  141,  142,  164, 

167;  referred  to,  272,  414. 
Pleasure,  contrasted  with  happiness, 

87;  contrasted  with  pleasures,  87; 

do  men  always  seek?  136. 
Pleasures,    are   they    incommensur- 
able? 139;  are  some  worthier  than 

others?  141. 
Politics,    corruption    in,    251,    323; 

forces    working   for    it,    324;   its 

evils,  326;  the  citizen's  duty  in, 

328;  legislative  reforms  in,  330. 
Poverty,  causes  of,  348. 
Praise  and  blame,  their  justification, 

105. 


454 


INDEX 


Preferential  Votinsr,  335. 
Primaries,  direct,  334. 
Profits,  regulation  of,  365,  386. 
Profit-sharing,  384. 
Prohibition  of  alcoholic  liquors,  205. 
Proportional  representation,  336. 
Prostitution,  213,  353. 
Protection,  426. 
Puritanism,  104,  118. 

Race-problems,  429. 

Race-suicide,  444. 

Radicalism,  forces  making  for,  52; 
conflict  with  conservatism,  54. 

Recall.  340. 

Recreation,  necessity  of,  438. 

Referendum,  341. 

Regulus,  case  of,  126,  137. 

Relativity  of  morality,  144. 

Religion  and  morality,  162. 

Representation  at  large,  338. 

Responsibility,  108;  grades  of,  108- 
09. 

Reward  and  punishment,  107. 

Right  and  wrong  {see  Morality),  def- 
inition of,  105. 

Rights,  natural,  401. 

Ross,  E.  A.,  quoted,  33,  58,  363. 

Ruskin,  quoted.  68,  265. 

Saleeby,  C.  W.,  quoted,  247. 

Saloon,  substitutes  for,  208,  441. 

Santayana,  G.,  quoted,  45,  74,  96, 
112,  219;  referred  to,  145. 

Segregation  of  prostitutes,  356;  of 
those  unfit  for  marriage,  445. 

Self-control,  possibilities  of  increas- 
ing, 276;  a  mechanism  of,  280. 

Self-indulgence,  119. 

Selfishness,  definition  of,  127;  of  the 
rich,  131,  237;  in  money-making, 
447. 

Self-realization  theory,  157. 

Separation  of  national  and  local  is- 
sues, 337. 

Sex-problem,  202,  210,  270,  314. 

Shakespeare,  quoted,  59,  175,  208, 
230. 

Short-ballot,  332. 

Sickness,  duty  of  the  State  toward, 
344. 


Simple  life,  the,  184,  238. 

Single-tax,  424. 

Smoking,  is  it  wrong?  192. 

Socialism,  advantages  of,  389;  dan- 
gers in,  392;  its  prevention  of  un- 
earned incomes,  423. 

Social  morality,  origin  of,  16;  causes 
producing,  18;  its  problems,  123, 
229. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  quoted,  85,  139 
403,  404. 

Spinoza,  quoted,  183. 

Stage.   See  Theater. 

Stephen,  Leslie,  quoted,  137. 

Sterilization  of  the  unfit,  445. 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  quoted, 
118,  223,  230,  246,  284,  293,  301, 
410;  referred  to,  172,  185. 

Stock  manipulation,  367,  391;  stock- 
watering,  366. 

Strikes,  382. 

Suffrage,  woman's,  432. 

Suffragettes,  89,  90,  411,  430. 

Suggestion,  its  value  for  morality,  278« 

Taste,  importance  of  sound,  266, 

Taxation  of  unearned  increment,  419; 
of  inheritance,  424. 

Teleological  theory  of  morality,  88. 

Theater,  ethics  of,  272. 

Thinking,  importance  of  accurate, 
264. 

Tolstoy,  quoted,  187,  237,  301,  401; 
referred  to,  119,  186,  196. 

Town-planning,  435. 

Trade-unions,  381. 

Treason,  is  it  permissible?  309. 

Trusts,  problem  of  the,  379. 

Truthfulness,  necessity  of,  244;  al- 
lowable exceptions  to,  247;  in 
what  directions  are  our  standards 
low?  250;  professional  standards 
of,  252;  in  journalism,  254. 

Unearned  incomes,  418;  unearned 
increment,  419. 

Unemployment,  voluntary,  185;  in- 
voluntary, 349. 

Vaccination,  compulsory,  345. 
Value,  definition  of,  74. 


INDEX 


^5 


Vegetarianism,  233. 
Vice,  commercialized,  353. 
Virtue.  See  morality. 
Vivisection,  233. 

Wages,  the  duty  to  pay  fair, 
methods  of  adjusting,  382, 
386. 

Wallace,  A.  R.,  quoted,  32. 

War,  its  benefits,  310;  its  evils, 


369; 
384, 


314; 


its  cost,  316;  how  can  we  banish? 

317. 
Wealth,  personal  use  of,  236;  dis' 

tribution  of,  415. 
Wells,  H.  G.,  quoted,  408. 
Woman-movement,    430.     See   alsi 

Suffragettes,  Suffrage. 
Wordsworth,  quoted,  130,  181. 
Work,  hours  of,  370;  conditioas  ol 

373. 


